/ 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO        i 


On  the    Truth 

of 

Decorative   Art 


A  Dialogue    between    an 
Oriental  and  an  Occidental 


By 

Lionel  de  Fonseka 


New    Popular    Issue 


New    York: 

Henry    Holt    &    Co 

1913 


Dedicated 
In  respect  and  affection 

to 

Simon    Richard    de    Fonseka 

Warnesuriya    Wijetunge  Samaranayake, 

Mudaliyar  of  the  Gate^ 

and 
Mudaliyar  of  Salpiti  Korle>  Ceylon. 


2082344 


PREFATORY    NOTE. 

THIS  dialogue  is  written  primarily  for  the  people  of 
Ceylon.  Sinhalese  art  has  hitherto  been  strictly 
decorative ;  and  as  a  Sinhalese  I  view  with  regret  the 
modern  tendency  in  Ceylon,  under  Western  influences, 
to  abandon  our  traditions  in  art  and  in  life.  It  seems 
to  me  that  Eastern  peoples  need  to  realize  at  the  least 
that  art,  education,  civilization,  admit  of  a  plural ;  also 
that  what  is  fortuitously  predominant  is  not  necessarily 
intrinsically  excellent.  It  is  regrettable  that  the  rise  of 
Western  commerce  should  involve  the  decline  of  Eastern 
art ;  but  though  regrettable,  it  is  not  inevitable. 

I  would  remind  the  Sinhalese  people  of  the  best 
traditions  of  our  art  by  calling  to  mind  a  work  of  our 
King,  Detu  Tissa,  an  artist  of  the  4th  century,  who,  in 
the  words  of  the  Maha-wansa,  "  was  a  skilful  carver, 
who  executed  many  arduous  undertakings  in  painting, 
and  taught  it  to  his  subjects.  He  modelled  a  statue  of 
Buddha  so  exquisitely  that  he  seemed  to  have  been 
inspired;  and  for  it  he  made  an  altar,  and  gilt  an 
edifice  inlaid  with  ivory." 


ON    THE    TRUTH 

OF 

DECORATIVE  ART 


A  DIALOGUE 
BETWEEN  AN  ORIENTAL  AND  AN  OCCIDENTAL 


I. 

ON    DECORATING    LIFE. 


I. 

ON  DECORATING  LIFE. 

"  L- 1  AVE  you  seen  this  article  in  the 
Journal  of  Side  Issues  ?  Here 
is  another  artist  complaining  that  the 
painter's  opportunities  are  limited  now- 
a-days  because  life  is  not  sufficiently 
picturesque." 

"  Well,  how  does  he  propose  to  make 
life  picturesque  ?  " 

"  He  suggests  among  other  things 
that  costume-balls  should  be  made  more 
fashionable  than  they  are,  so  that  ordinary 
life  too  might  have,  as  he  says,  something 
of  the  quality  of  a  masquerade.  He 
believes  that  the  present  popularity  of 
pageants  is  a  hopeful  sign  in  that  they 
bring  home  to  people  the  colourlessness 
of  modern  life  by  contrast." 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  Does  he  ?  I  should  say  that  the 
modern  taste  for  pageants  is  most 
ominous.  You  have  been  having  so 
many  pageants  lately,  and  charging  for 
admission  to  them  at  so  much  per  head, 
that  you  think  the  only  proper  place  for 
a  pageant  is  an  enclosed  area.  You 
seem  to  think  that  the  first  essential  of 
a  pageant  is  a  paling.  Consequently 
you  will  never  make  a  pageant  of  life — 
or  ever  have  a  pageant  in  real  life." 

"  We  had  one  last  year — the  pageant 
of  the  Coronation.  I  suppose  you  were 
in  London  at  the  time.  What  did  you 
think  of  the  Coronation  and  the  English 
expression  of  festivity  ?  " 

"  I  really  don't  know  what  to  think 
of  it.  It  was  said  by  some  at  the  time 
that  the  Coronation  was  a  failure.  I 
wonder  if  it  was.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  rather  that  the  English,  and 
Western  peoples  generally,  have  lost 
the  faculty  of  expression.  Of  course, 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

it  may  be  that  the  whole  ceremony 
and  pomp  of  the  Coronation  had  no 
significance  for  the  people — that  it  was 
a  masquerade  enacted  by  a  few  chosen 
actors,  leaving — to  borrow  a  phrase  from 
your  politicians — the  mass  of  the  people 
untouched.  But  I  am  unwilling  to 
believe  it.  Where  there  is  no  sentiment 
of  course  one  could  not  expect  an  ex- 
pression. But  from  my  own  observations 
I  am  led  to  believe  that  the  necessary 
sentiment  did  exist  among  the  people — 
at  least  there  was  a  disposition  to  en- 
courage it — a  mood  like  that  of  a  man 
about  to  fall  in  love,  who  gives  free  rein 
to  his  imagination.  But  the  English 
people  failed  on  that  occasion  to  give 
expression  not  only  to  the  sentiment 
but  even  to  its  begetting  mood.  Western 
peoples  have  been  hankering  after 
needless  expression  so  long  that  when 
there  is  an  opportunity  and  a  call  for 
exuberant  expression,  they  cannot  rise 
to  it.  They  have  no  artistic  sense." 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  That  is  a  very  comprehensive,  and, 
if  I  may  say  so,  a  slightly  original  remark. 
Anyhow  what  do  you  mean  by  an  artistic 
sense  ?  " 

"  In  this  case  I  suppose  I  mean  a 
sense  of  the  fitness  of  things.  Did  you 
notice  the  Coronation  "decorations" 
in  Whitehall  ?  I  believe  those  particular 
decorations  were  meant  to  give  ex- 
pression to  the  Imperial  sentiment.  It 
may  be  that  the  expression  produced 
was  a  fitting  one.  If  that  was  so,  I 
should  have  to  credit  the  artist  re- 
sponsible for  its  production  with  a  spirit 
of  sad  irony." 

"  How  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Well,  did  it  not  strike  you  as 
being  rather  a  petrified  expression? — 
'  Triumphal  arches '  in  stucco,  and  those 
columns  erected  with  such  regularity 
and  precision.  Did  not  the  whole  thing 
appear  machine-made  ?  But,  as  I  said, 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

I  am  unwilling  to  judge  the  sentiment 
by  the  expression.  I  prefer  to  think 
that  Western  peoples  do  not  understand 
expression." 

"  You  amaze  me." 

"  In  the  East  now,  we  use  a  profusion 
of  palm-leaves  and  greenery  on  festive 
occasions,  a  usage  that  obtained  also  in 
early  Christendom.  You  will  remember 
the  observance  of  Palm  Sunday  still 
preserved  in  the  Catholic  Church. 
*  But,'  you  will  object,  *  We  have  no 
palm-leaves  in  England.5  Maybe,  but 
there  are  flowers  in  the  fields.  Why  so 
much  tinsel  and  tissue-paper?  How- 
ever, this  is  only  one  instance,  and  that 
a  disputable  one,  of  the  current  Western 
misunderstanding  of  expression.  My 
remark  holds  good.  Western  peoples  do 
not  understand  expression." 

"  In  what  way  ?  " 

"  In  this  way  perhaps.  In  the  West, 
expression  is  held  to  be  the  function  of 

5  B 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

art.  In  the  East  we  believe  that  the  end 
of  art  is  decoration.  The  difference 
between  these  two  theories  of  art  is  at 
once  the  symbol  and  the  reason  of  the 
difference  between  East  and  West.  It 
affects  the  whole  ordering  of  the  lives  of 
the  East  and  of  the  West." 

"  I  am  afraid  I  must  insist  on  some 
farther  explanation." 

"  I  will  explain  as  well  as  I  can.  In 
the  first  place,  you  Westerns  have  no 
artistic  sense.  I  mean  by  this  a  sense 
of  the  fitness  of  things,  though  it  may 
seem  idle  to  talk  of  an  '  artistic  sense  ' 
when  the  matter  at  issue  is  the 
difference  between  two  theories  of  art. 
But,  you  see,  as  an  Eastern,  I  include 
life  as  coming  within  the  scope  of  the 
artistic  sense, — and  in  precisely  such  a 
sense,  a  sense  of  artistic  living,  you 
appear  to  be  lacking.  Hence  the  artistic 
errors  of  the  Coronation — errors  which 
we  could  never  have  committed,  since 

6 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

our  theory  of  art  would  have  saved  us 
from  them.  You  have  been  led  into 
these  errors  through  your  wrong  notion 
of  expression.  You  are  too  self-conscious 
about  art  and  about  expression.  You 
are  always  trying  to  express  yourselves. 
We  never  do — neither  in  art  nor  in  life. 
You  aim  at  expression  and  fail.  We 
aim  at  repression  and  succeed, — and 
incidentally  achieve  expression  as  well. 
That  your  expressions  fail,  however,  is 
not  in  itself  a  proof  that  you  are  not 
sound  at  heart.  The  festive  expression 
you  evoked  for  the  Coronation  was  a 
failure.  But  do  not  be  despondent  on 
that  account  about  the  Monarchy  or  the 
Empire.  Expression  is  apt  to  lie." 

"  I  am  a  loyal  subject  of  His  Majesty, 
and  following  the  Birmingham  mode, 
my  thought  is  tinged  with  the  rosy  hue 
of  Imperialism.  For  the  sake  of  my 
peace  of  mind  you  will  perhaps  cite 
some  instances  of  lying  expression." 

7  B2 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  The  hue  of  Imperialism  is  not  rosy 
but  scarlet.  That  cast  of  thought  alone 
is  not  pale  but  clamorously  ruddy ;  and 
wisely  do  you  paint  the  Empire  red  on 
your  maps,  there  for  once  contriving  a 
truthful  expression.  But  we  are  con- 
cerned rather  with  lying  expression. 
Just  now,  decorative  dancing,  as  you 
know,  is  much  in  vogue  in  Europe.  It 
is  a  good  sign.  It  has  not  been  so 
always.  You  will  remember  Isidora 
Duncan  and  Maud  Allan,  and  the 
Russian  Dancers  at  Covent  Garden. 
Well,  in  the  East  decorative  dancing 
has  always  been  in  favour,  but  not 
ball-room  dancing.  Ball-room  dancing, 
by  the  way,  when  it  is  not  a  giddy 
gallop  is  an  inane  shuffle.  It  is  either 
too  much  or  too  little  civilized.  I  was 
present  at  some  London  balls  recently. 
In  half  the  dances  the  dancers  seemed 
intensely  bacchic,  and  in  the  other  half 
they  seemed  intensely  bored — which 
convinced  me  that  ball-room  dancing  is 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

not  a  form  of  art.  It  certainly  is  not 
beautiful.  Eastern  ladies  have  never 
countenanced  balls,  though  they  admire 
decorative  dances  by  professional 
dancers — the  dances  of  geishas  and 
nautch-girls  for  instance.  It  was  so  with 
Romans  of  the  austere,  aristocratic 
temper.  They  would  not  dance  them- 
selves, but  gladly  looked  on  the  dancing 
of  others.  '  No  one  dances  except  when 
not  sober,'  said  Cicero.  Ball-room 
dancing  in  Europe  is  often  only  a  con- 
vention. As  an  expression  it  may  be 
too  expressive.  It  is  too  near  akin  to 
the  actor's  art.  No  spiritual  aristocrat 
will  prostitute  his  expressions  to  the 
emotions  of  another.  The  most  gentle 
aristocrats  will  not  give  free  expression 
to  their  own  emotions.  That  Eastern 
ladies  should  have  rejected  so  immediate 
a  form  of  expression  as  personal  dancing 
is  the  proof  of  an  exquisitely  eclectic 
taste.  So  that  when  you  hear  people 
objecting  to  the  '  promiscuous  dancing 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

of  the  ball-room/  you  need  not  infer 
that  they  are  prudes.  It  is  possible  that 
you  have  been  misreading  your  history 
oftener  than  you  think.  Cromwell  and 
his  Roundheads  were  in  truth  more 
courtly — regal  after  the  Aurelian 
fashion — than  Charles  and  his  courtly 
Cavaliers.  The  Puritans  were  men  of 
a  rare  preciosity.  What  was  mistaken 
for  Philistinism  was  really  their  fastidi- 
ousness— present  day  Quakers  still 
retain  a  degree  of  their  ancestors' 
quaintness.  The  Commonwealth  Icono- 
clasts were  aesthetes  who  had  the 
courage  of  their  aesthetic  theory  and 
happened  to  be  energetic.  They  were 
the  Futurists  of  the  past.  The  Futurists 
of  the  present  day  are,  as  you  know, 
admitted  on  all  hands  to  be  Decadents 
in  the  last  stage  of  decay.  Expressions, 
you  see,  are  often  treacherous  and  mis- 
leading. I  can  cite  a  more  recent  and 
more  particular  instance  of  ambiguous 
expression.  Judged  by  his  appearance 

10 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

and  his  attire,  Baudelaire,  that  master 
of  Decadence,  might  have  been  taken 
for  a  Genevan  cleric.  Which  expression 
should  you  trust  ? — for  a  waist-coat  is 
an  expression  no  less  than  a  prose-poem, 
provided  of  course  that  the  waist-coat  is 
worn  for  its  own  sake  without  any  idea 
of  creating  an  impression.  If  Truth  is 
Beauty,  the  fact  that  expression  is  apt 
to  lie  is  an  argument  for  pure  decoration 
as  an  artistic  end.  At  any  rate,  conscious 
expression  is,  I  fear,  an  artistic  error." 

"  But  surely  artistic  achievement  lies 
simply  in  the  conscious  expression  of 
personal  emotion." 

"Ah  yes,  one  hears  that  said  very 
often.  Did  not  Oscar  Wilde  say, '  Now- 
adays a  broken  heart  runs  into  many 
editions  J  ?  But  at  other  times  Wilde 
himself  prattled  much  about  intensity  of 
feeling.  Some  people  would  break  their 
hearts  deliberately  in  order  that  the 
editions  might  have  a  sale.  Who  was 
ii 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  French  writer  who  said  that  the 
world  was  made  in  order  that  a  beautiful 
book  might  be  written  ?  We  believe  that 
the  world  was  made  to  live  and  die  in — 
especially  to  die  in.  No  ;  one  should  aim 
not  at  intensity  but  at  rarity  of  feeling. 
Emotion,  you  say,  is  necessary  to  artistic 
achievement.  What  is  more  desirable 
is  a  mood.  A  mood  is  a  rarified  emotion. 
A  mood  precludes  conscious  expression, 
yet  it  leaves  its  reflection  on  the  artistic 
product,  as  the  mood  of  a  parent  when 
begetting  is  said  to  shed  a  shadow  or  a 
radiance  on  the  life  of  the  offspring.  It 
is  only  when  thus  rarified  that  an  emotion 
can,  in  any  true  sense,  *  be  translated 
into  a  medium.'  But  more  often  people 
pour  their  feelings  chaotically  into 
receptacles.  The  melting  hearts  run 
into  the  many  editions.  In  the  Potter's 
Shop  of  art  the  vessel  takes  its  shape 
from  its  contents.  Hence  it  is  that  so 
many  of  your  would-be  artistic  vessels, 
far  from  being  vessels  of  election,  are 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

absolutely  formless.  The  Greeks  knew 
the  value  of  moods.  The  freizes  and 
pediments  of  their  temples,  and  their 
vases  were  reflections  of  moods.  The 
Grecian  Urn  commemorated  by  Keats 
was  a  mood  translated  into  a  medium. 
Tennyson's  In  Memoriam  was  an 
emotion  spilt  into  an  elegy.  Which  is 
the  more  vital  art — the  decoration  of  the 
vase  which  was  meant  to  express  nothing 
and  symbolizes  much,  or  the  elegy  which 
was  meant  to  express  feeling,  but 
succeeds  only  in  expressing  failure  ?  " 

"  But  surely,  if  you  bar  feeling,  you 
must  supply  some  other  motive  for 
artistic  creation.  One  can  do  nothing, 
at  least  one  can  do  nothing  well,  without 
a  motive." 

"  Quite  true.  I  do  not  say  that  we 
bar  all  feeling  in  Eastern  art.  We  forbid 
the  conscious  expression  of  personal 
feeling.  As  for  motives,  there  are  other 
motives  than  the  selfish,  just  as  there 
is 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

are   many   feelings,  many  moods  other 
than  the  personal." 

"  I  dare  say.  But  of  what  value  for 
art  are  such  motives  and  such  feelings  ? 
An  art  which  lacks  the  personal  motive 
must  be  frigid,  and  an  art  unprompted 
by  personal  feeling  must  be  conventional. 
Art  should  above  all  things  be  human — 
arising  from  human  needs  and  quickening 
human  sympathies.  You  remember 
Miranda's  words,  '  I  have  suffered  with 
those  I  have  seen  suffer.*  And  do  we 
too  not  suffer  with  Miranda  on  the 
Island,  and  share  Lear's  anguish  on 
,the  heath, — and  weep  with  Niobe  over 
her  stricken  children  ?  Are  we  not 
maddened  with  something  of  Medea's 
jealousy  and  despair  when  she  is  moved 
to  poision  her  babes,  and  share 
Laocoon's  helpless  terror  when  he  would 
save  his  sons  from  the  dread  monsters  ? 
Do  we  not  weep  with  Dido  when  she 
sees  ./Eneas  depart  from  Tyre  ?  " 

14 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"And  with  George  Sand  when  she 
sees  de  Musset  leave  Venice  for 
Switzerland  ?  You  might  weep  once, 
but  George  Sand  repeated  her  emotions, 
and  I  take  it  you  would  not  care  to  weep 
anew  over  each  repetition.  All  George 
Sand's  and  most  modern  novels  might 
well  bear  the  title  Elle  et  Lui.  If 
you  thus  reiterate  the  emotion,  why  not 
re-echo  the  title?  You  might  perhaps 
have  Lui  et  Elle  for  a  variation.  You 
say  that  an  art  unprompted  by  personal 
feeling  must  be  conventional,  hinting 
that  personal  feeling  must  save,  art 
from  convention.  But  it  is  abundantly 
clear  that  that  form  of  Western  art 
which  is  classified  in  your  literary  reviews 
under  the  head  of  '  Recent  Fiction ' 
suffers  seriously  from  the  convention  of 
a  particular  personal  feeling.  I  cannot 
understand  the  term  '  Recent  Fiction ' 
either,  since  the  fiction  is  as  ancient  as  the 
Garden  of  Eden.  And  what  is  a  fiction 
which  isn't  fresh  ?  It  is  a  convention." 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"If  conventions  then  confessedly  are 
fossilized  lies,  does  not  Eastern  art 
stand  condemned,  being,  as  it  is,  almost 
entirely  an  art  of  conventions?  You 
criticize  Western  art  as  based  on 
expression,  which,  you  say,  is  apt  to  lie. 
How  about  Eastern  art  which  apparently 
lives  on  falsehood  ?  Or  is  Truth  not 
Beauty  ?  " 

"  Yes,  conventions  are  confessedly 
fossilized  lies — and  the  fact  of  being 
conventional,  which  you  hurl  at  Eastern 
art  as  a  reproach,  we  accept  merely  as 
a  qualification.  But  consider — a  con- 
fessed lie  is  no  longer  a  lie,  and  a  lie 
whose  falsehood  was  professed  before  it 
was  ever  uttered  was  never  a  lie  at  all. 
In  the  sphere  of  ethics  such  lies  are 
called  parables ;  in  literature  they  are 
allegories  ;  in  art  they  are  symbols.  In 
so  far  as  it  speaks  in  symbols  then. 
Eastern  art  is  conventional,  as  every 
art  which  speaks  in  symbols  must  be. 

if 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Your  art  is  conventional  because  it 
speaks  in  parables.  Your  symbols  are 
cautionary  signs,  and  your  allegories 
cautionary  tales.  So  that  your  art  is 
conventional  not  by  virtue  of  its  artistic 
essence,  but  by  reason  of  the  ethical 
element  which  dominates  your  art.  It  is 
of  the  nature  of  Eastern  art  to  be 
conventional.  The  conventionalism  of 
Western  art  is  a  disease." 

"  Surely  now  you  are  quibbling,  or 
— to  borrow  a  euphemism  from  the 
Greeks — you  are  saying  nothing.  How 
could  the  same  thing  be  health  in  one 
art  and  disease  in  another  art  ?  If 
conventions  are  a  disease  in  Western 
art — a  contention  which  I  do  not  admit, 
since  I  deny  that  Western  art  is  con- 
ventional— they  must  be  so  in  Eastern 
art  as  well.  Is  not  all  art  one  ?  So 
that  the  nature  or  constitution  of  Eastern 
art  could  not  be  different  from  the  nature 
or  constitution  of  Western  art,  and  what 

17 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

is  health  or  disease  in  the  one  must  be 
health  or  disease  in  the  other." 

"  Conventions  in  Eastern  art  are  a 
property.  In  Western  art  they  are  an 
affection.  Consider  art  as  an  organism. 
A  property  of  an  organism  comes  of  its 
nature  or  constitution,  when  the  members 
of  the  organism  are  in  harmony  with 
each  other, — when,  in  other  words,  the 
organism  is  in  a  state  of  health.  An 
affection,  on  the  other  hand,  arises  when 
the  members  are  at  discord.  In  Plato's 
words,  a  harmony  perishes  when  the 
elements  composing  it  are  not  at  the 
right  tension.  Now  in  Western  art,  the 
ethical  element  is  inharmoniously  pre- 
dominant. Your  art  is  too  exclusively 
ethical — ethical  in  the  derivative  sense 
of  having  a  moral  bias,  and  also  in  the 
immediate  sense  of  being  too  much 
concerned  with  character — with  Ethos, 
in  the  Aristotelian  sense  of  the  word. 
The  conventions  of  Eastern  art  belong 

18 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

to  form,  where  they  are  natural.  The 
conventions  of  Western  art  belong  to 
matter,  and  are  an  affection.  And  that 
is  why  I  say  that  Eastern  art  is  con- 
ventional by  virtue  of  its  artistic  essence, 
which  amounts  to  saying  that  formal 
conventions  are  a  necessary  condition 
of  art.  Convention  belongs  to  form, — 
it  is  the  virtue  of  form.  Material  con- 
ventions on  the  other  hand  are  repugnant 
to  art.  They  arise  when  the  organism 
of  art  is  out  of  harmony  through  the 
undue  predominance  of  some  element. 
So  you  will  understand  my  remark 
that  the  conventionalism  of  Western  art 
is  a  disease,  vitiating  your  art  for  this 
further  reason  also,  that  your  material 
conventions  are  essentially  false  con- 
ventions." 

"  Don't  you  think  you  are  disposed 
to  be  a  trifle  arrogant,  in  thus  demand- 
ing the  excellence  of  Eastern,  and  de- 
rogating without  warrant  the  excellence 

19 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

of  Western  art?  Did  we  not  agree 
in  this  at  any  rate,  that  all  conven- 
tions are  lies  ?  " 

"  Conventions  we  agreed  to  regard 
as  confessed  lies.  The  symbols  of 
Eastern  art,  conventions  of  form,  are 
accepted  by  us  as  lies.  That  is  to  say, 
we  realize  that  they  symbolize,  that  they 
stand  for  something,  very  often  for  an 
unknown  quantity.  In  themselves,  we 
know  that  they  are  nothing,  or  if  you 
prefer  it,  are  not  real.  And  so  these 
symbols  contain  an  essence  of  truth.  It 
is  different  with  your  conventions  of 
matter.  They  are  lies,  but  they  are 
unconfessed  lies,  and  so  they  hold  an 
essence  of  falsehood.  In  fact  lies  of 
matter,  by  their  very  nature,  cannot  be 
confessed,  because  they  are  literally 
substantial  lies,  and  their  essence  is 
their  falsehood.  You  cannot  deny  the 
reality  of  your  conventions  without  deny- 
ing the  truth  of  your  art.  And  so  it  is 


20 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

that  material  conventions  are  disease  in 
art.  An  art  that  deals  in  material  con- 
ventions truly  lives  on  falsehood.  Yours 
is  an  art  of  self-conscious  expression, 
and  such  expression  inevitably  lies. 
The  exaggeration  of  the  ethical  element 
in  your  art  is  the  direct  outcome  of  self- 
conscious  expression." 

"  Would  you  think  me  very  trouble- 
some if  I  asked  you  to  instance  some 
particular  material  conventions  ?  " 

"  Well,  there  is  the  convention  of 
Love — the  theme  of  all  your  novelists 
and  dramatists — a  material  convention 
which  colours  all  your  art  and  particularly 
pervades  your  music.  Wagner's  is  of 
course  erotic  music  in  its  most  accent- 
uated form,  but  all  your  music  is  similarly 
tinged.  Instead  of  being  as  it  was  with 
the  Greeks,  and  is  with  Orientals,  the 
most  '  imitative '  of  the  arts,  compre- 
hending life  in  all  its  variety,  symbolizing 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  ideal  harmony  of  life,  and  initiating 
men  into  the  art  of  living,  it  is  with  you 
merely  an  initiation  into  the  art  of  Love." 

"  Surely  you  are  unjust.  What  of 
the  music  of  the  Salvation  Army  ?  "  , 

"  That  is  the  martial  music  of  militant 
Christianity.  Truly  religious  music  is  of 
course  an  exception,  and  the  reason  of  it 
is  that  it  is  decorative  art.  Music  is 
often  instanced  as  the  type  of  all  the 
arts,  as  art  at  its  highest  expression,  in 
the  algebraical  sense,  and  with  music 
for  the  type,  one  could  see  the  truth 
of  decorative  as  against  expressive  art. 
You  often  make  it  the  peculiar  excel- 
lence of  your  music  that  it  is  *  pure,' 
meaning  that  it  is  purely  expressive, 
that  it  does  not  contain  moral  lessons 
as  your  drama  is  apt  to  do,  that  it  does 
not  like  your  novels  draw  attention  to 
crying  social  evils,  and  that  unlike  archi- 
tecture, it  is  entirely  divorced  from 


22 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

utility.  Here  apparently  is  an  art  whose 
end  is  purely  aesthetic  pleasure.  But 
did  not  that  truly  Oriental  philosopher, 
Plato,  draw  attention  to  the  possible 
corruption  of  an  art  which  ministers 
solely  to  pleasure,  even  to  aesthetic 
pleasure  ?  As  it  is,  your  '  pure  '  music 
has  become  corrupt,  being  vitiated  by 
the  material  convention  of  Love.  Where 
your  music  has  remained  pure  is  where 
it  has  remained  decorative,  where  the 
art  has  remained  accessory  and  not 
become  independent.  And  decorative 
in  this  way  music  has  remained  as 
accompaniment  to  the  religious  services 
of  the  Catholic  Church  for  instance,  and 
in  general,  where  it  is  an  accompaniment 
to  the  occasions  of  life.  Yes  music  is 
primarily  an  accompanying  art — accom- 
panying the  singer  in  his  song,  the 
worshipper  in  his  praise,  the  soldier  on 
his  march,  the  athlete  at  his  exercises, 
and  even  the  galley-slave  at  his  oar. 
Music  is  truly  the  type  of  the  arts,  which 

23  C2 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

should  all  be  primarily  decorative  and  so 
many  accompaniments  to  life." 

"  Religious  music,  it  is  true,  has 
remained  accessory,  or,  as  you  say, 
decorative,  but  then  Church  music  is 
dead  music.  It  remains  stationary,  a 
good  instance  of  hieratic,  conventional 
art.  And  if  decorative  music  is  to  be 
considered  the  type  of  all  decorative  art, 
then  decorative  art  is  indeed  dead  art. 
Expressive  music,  on  the  other  hand, 
like  all  expressive  art,  is  living  art.  Let 
us  return  however  to  the  (  material  con- 
vention of  Love  '  as  you  call  it.  You 
have  not  shown  that  it  is  a  false  con- 
vention, or  indeed  that  it  is  a  convention 
at  all.  If  our  expressive  music  has  an 
erotic  tinge,  it  means  simply  that  our 
music  gives  expression  to  a  fundamental 
human  instinct,  and  far  from  being 
corrupted,  as  you  maintain,  by  the 
emotion  of  Love,  music  idealizes  the 
emotion,  which  itself  is  not  false,  but 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

essentially  real,  having  its  basis  in  human 
nature." 

"  The  emotion  of  Love  ?  Love  is  a 
sensation  which  your  civilization  has 
turned  into  a  sentiment.  The  sensation 
is  real,  having,  as  you  say,  its  basis  in 
human  nature.  It  is  real  enough  to  be 
used  in  Eastern  art  as  a  symbol.  But 
what  of  the  sentiment?  Surely  it  is  a 
fiction,  and  essentially  false — a  material 
convention.  The  sentiment  of  Love  is 
unknown  in  the  East,  and  as  Orientals 
constitute  a  fair  proportion  of  mankind,  it 
is  reasonable  to  conclude  that  Love  as  a 
sentiment  is  not  rooted  in  human  nature. 
And  it  is  this  sentiment  that  is  a 
convention  in  your  art  and  an  obsession 
in  your  life.  You  talk  of  the  Eternal 
Feminine,  but  with  you  the  Feminine  is 
Eternal  and  Omnipresent.  You  are 
not  pantheists  indeed,  but  you  are 
pangynists,  because  you  see  Woman 
everywhere.  You  cannot  regard  nature 

25 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

except  with  the  eyes  of  Love,  nor 
interpret  life  except  in  terms  of  sex. 
Where  you  might  see  the  Divine,  you 
see  only  the  Feminine.  Hence,  I 
suppose  that  peculiarly  Western  phrase, 
'  a  passionate  love  of  nature  ' — a  phrase 
unheard  in  the  East.  An  Oriental  sees 
God  in  nature,  and  so  he  tries  to  under- 
stand nature.  Remember  that  our  first 
duty  to  God  is  to  know  Him,  the  second 
to  love  Him,  and  that  the  greatest  saints 
of  the  East  and  of  the  West  passed 
their  lives  *  in  meditation  on  the  divine 
attributes.'  One  proof  of  the  Oriental's 
sanity  of  vision  in  regard  to  nature  is 
that  he  is  never  guilty  of  the  '  pathetic 
fallacy '  in  his  relations  with  nature. 
Nature  he  views  as  something  compre- 
hensible, and  understanding  it  he  uses 
natural  forms  as  symbols  and  artistic 
patterns.  A  Japanese  writer  has  remarked 
that  a  work  of  art  is  an  essay  on  nature. 
The  conventional  designs  of  Eastern 
art  are  not  artificial,  being,  in  the  first 

26 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

instance,  drawn  from  nature.  These 
conventional  patterns  really  prove  that 
the  Oriental  is  familiar  with  all  nature's 
moods  and  aspects.  An  Eastern 
temple  is  a  revelation  of  man's  con- 
sciousness of  the  forces  of  nature. 
The  Egyptians  raised  monuments 
in  the  likeness  of  mountains — instar 
montium  eductce  pyr amides  t  as  Tacitus 
observes.  '  We  feel  in  Indian  temples/ 
says  Lamennais,  '  an  infinite  power  of 
increase.'  The  architecture  of  the  East 
conveys  a  sense  of  the  mystery  and  the 
vastness  of  nature.  In  the  decoration 
of  their  temples  the  artists  betray  their 
sensitiveness  to  all  natural  phenomena. 
They  understand  these  phenomena  and 
use  them  as  symbols.  You,  however,  view 
natifre  with  '  romantic  longing,'  a  diffuse 
desire,  and  where  the  Oriental  grasps  the 
comprehensible,  you  are  overcome  by  the 
ineffable.  And  when  you  are  thus  over- 
come, you  will  not  remain  wisely  mute, 
but  forsooth  must  take  to  expression. 

27 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Could  you  expect  romantic  poetry  to  be 
other  than  incoherent  ?  Je  rien  vois  pas 
le  necessite.  The  self-conscious  expres- 
sions of  romantic  poets  are  gratuitous 
lies." 

"  But  why  lies  ?  Surely  these  poets 
express  only  what  they  feel." 

"  Yes — poor  things  !  But  their  feeling 
is  false.  Their  passion  for  nature  is  born 
of  the  obsession  of  Love.  And  so  their 
expression  is  false  from  the  point  of 
view  of  art.  To  a  pathologist  their 
expression  may  be  true.  It  is  certain 
to  be  interesting." 

"  I  am  afraid  I  don't  follow  you.  You 
admit  that  the  feeling  of  these  poets  may 
be  real.  Then,  if  they  are  sincere,  their 
expression  of  it  must  be  true.  The  feel- 
ing exists,  they  produce  a  copy  of  it. 
The  line  of  art  is  parallel  to  the  line  of 
life.  Truth  in  art  consists  in  the  paral- 
lelism of  the  lines." 
28 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

11  And  parallel  lines  do  not  meet, 
being  produced  ever  so  far  in  either 
direction.  But  we  Orientals  believe  that 
life  and  art  are  one.  We  say  that  in  the 
beginning  they  were  wedded,  and  it 
is  our  aim  never  to  part  them 
asunder.  You — somewhat  unnaturally — 
would  start  the  universe  on  its  course 
with  a  decree  nisi  for  a  blessing.  And 
incidentally,  let  me  remind  you  that  as 
a  metaphysical  position  the  corres- 
pondence-theory of  truth  is  untenable." 

"  How  then  do  you  regard  truth  ?  " 

"  It  is  more  reasonable  to  regard  truth 
as  coherence.  '  Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth 
Beauty,'  because  truth  is  coherence, 
and  beauty  is  coherence, — and  the  test 
of  coherence  is  stability.  True  art  is  a 
logical  conclusion,  with  life  for  the 
major,  and  religion  for  the  minor  premise. 
Your  art  is  dissociated  from  life,  as  it  is 
divorced  from  religion.  A  disconnected 

29 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

art  is  a  false  art.  Literally,  it  is  an 
absurdity.  Art  for  art's  sake,  expression 
for  expression's  sake,  are  contradictions 
in  terms  or  tautologies.  Your  art  in  fact 
is,  as  you  suggested,  a  would-be  parallel 
line,  for  ever  severed  from  life,  or  it  is  a 
vicious  circle." 

"  But  let  us  leave  our  poets  and  turn 
to  our  dramatists  and  novelists.  You 
cannot,  at  any  rate,  say  that  they  would 
be  interesting  merely  as  subjects  for 
pathological  study — since  their  art  is 
not  expressive  purely  for  expression's 
sake.  They  aim  at  the  portrayal  of 
action  and  character." 

"  Ah  !  —  portrayal  again  —  still  the 
fallacy  of  the  parallel  line.  But  after 
that  preliminary  criticism  let  us  proceed. 
I  said  that  the  self-conscious  expres- 
sions of  your  romantic  poets  are 
gratuitous  lies.  Your  dramatists  and 
novelists  lie  with  a  purpose — the  most 

30 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

distressing  form  of  falsehood.  Your 
drama  and  your  novel  are  didactic. 
They  both  contain  some  moral  and 
expound  some  thesis.  Even  '  Dorian 
Gray'  is  said  to  contain  a  moral.  At 
least  a  section  of  the  British  public  thinks 
it  necessary  to  urge  this  point  in  ex- 
tenuation of  the  book.  Then,  if  even 
your  romantic  realists  are  moralists,  are 
we  to  suppose  that  life  itself  contains  a 
moral  ?  " 

"Why  not?" 

"  If  life  contains  a  moral,  it  appears, 
as  in  your  novels,  at  the  end  of  the 
last  chapter.  For  the  moral  of  life  is 
the  fact  of  death.  In  form,  at  any 
rate,  your  dramatists  and  novelists  are 
coherent.  In  this  respect  at  least  they 
are  true  to  life.  But  the  promise  is 
deceptive.  Both  your  drama  and  your 
novel  are  vitiated  by  false  conventions  of 
matter." 

31 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

11  How  do  you  mean  ?  Is  their  moral 
false  ?  Surely  not.  And  if  their  moral 
is  true,  they  could  not  arrive  at  it  from 
false  premises.  I  will  concede  that  the 
moral  may  be  conventional  since  truth  is 
always  conventional." 

"  Ah,  there  you  have  exactly  hit  on 
the  fallacy  of  your  drama  and  your  novel. 
Truth  is  not  conventional,  but  your 
dramatists  and  novelists  treat  it  as  if  it 
were.  I  mean  that  they  present  conven- 
tions for  truth.  And  so  the  conventions 
become  false  conventions  of  matter — 
false,  because  unconfessed  as  conven- 
tions. You  say,  for  instance,  that  your 
drama  portrays  character  and  action, 
and  you  believe  that  character  creates 
action.  This  single  notion  of  portrayal 
is  sufficient  to  vitiate  your  drama.  One 
could  never  produce  a  true,  that  is  to 
say,  a  complete  portrait  whether  of 
character  or  of  action.  You  have 
deserted  formal  conventions  in  the  drama 

32 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

for  greater  freedom  to  be  faithful  as  you 
supposed,  forgetting  that  complete 
fidelity  is  utterly  beyond  our  reach. 
Wisdom  is  to  accept  our  limitations ; 
to  recognize,  first  that  conventions  are 
necessary  in  art ;  secondly,  and  this  is 
important,  that  convention  belongs  to 
form  alone.  In  this  way  only  can  we 
attain  such  truth  as  is  permitted  us." 

"  Formal  conventions  in  the  drama ! 
I  must  confess  your  idea  strikes  me  as 
rather  fantastic." 

"  I  assure  you  I  am  quite  reasonable. 
Consider  the  drama  of  the  Greeks.  In 
the  Greek  drama,  as  in  the  Oriental,  the 
action  is  conventionalised,  not  the 
characters.  You  will  remember  Aris- 
totle's insistence  on  unity  of  plot,  and 
the  minute  details  with  regard  to 
'  Recognition,'  '  Reversal  of  Intention/ 
etc.,  laid  down  in  the  Poetics.  The  form 
of  the  play,  that  is  the  plot,  was  in 

33 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Greek  drama  frankly  a  convention.  In 
your  modern  Western  drama,  on  the 
other  hand,  you  conventionalize  your 
characters,  but  you  do  not  admit  the 
fact.  You  have  your  conventional  types, 
and  any  character  which  departs  from 
these  you  call  '  unconvincing,'  as  though 
your  conventional  characters  were 
convincing.  But  men  cannot  be  forced 
into  types.  The  types  you  create 
must  necessarily  be  false — false  through 
suppressio  veri,  and  these  lies  are 
unconfessed.  You  say  your  art  is  human, 
but  here  you  do  violence  to  humanity 
in  forcing  men  into  categories.  You 
hinder  the  spontaneous  expression  of 
individuality,  and  you  ignore  caprice, — 
unless  of  course  you  create  the  capricious 
character.  You  invert  the  natural  order 
of  things,  and  make  the  characters 
create  the  action,  instead  of  letting 
the  action  reveal  the  characters. 
Given  such  and  such  characters,  you 
are  quite  certain  what  will  happen, 

34 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

although  the  only  thing  you  can  be 
certain  of  is  that,  given  such  and  such 
characters,  anything  may  happen.  Your 
dramatists  would  make  excellent 
private  detectives  for  the  six-penny 
magazines.  Your  characters,  in  short, 
are  false  material  conventions.  If  you 
wish  to  inculcate  moral  lessons,  why 
not  frankly  return  to  the  Morality 
Play  ?  That  at  least  had  no 
falsehood  in  it.  The  characters  were 
acknowledged  to  be  symbols.  You  are 
afraid  to  admit  that  your  characters, 
your  moral  or  immoral  types,  are  merely 
cautionary  signs,  for  fear  of  spoiling  the 
moral  effect  of  your  plays.  Consequently 
your  signs  are  taken  for  entities,  your 
puppets  are  taken  for  men.  You  do 
wrong  to  humanity  in  this — that  in 
return  men  are  taken  for  puppets  by 
themselves.  Numbers  of  young  men 
and  women  in  this  city,  I  am  told, 
journey  nightly  from  the  suburbs 
to  the  West-End  by  Tube,  hoping 

35 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

to  meet,  not  their  affinities,  but  their 
'  types '  on  the  stage  ;  and  having  met 
and  hailed  their  types,  they  are  of  course 
true  to  them  ever  after.  It  is  terrible  to 
think  how  many  suburban  Ann  Whit- 
fields  have  resolutely  tracked  innocent 
men  to  their  doom  since  '  Man 
and  Superman'  appeared.  Yes,  the 
inhumanity  of  western  drama  began  with 
*  Euripides  the  human.'  Greek  drama 
before  Euripides  was  ruled  by  the 
Oriental  idea  of  Fate.  If  the  Greeks 
exalted  humanity  in  their  sculpture,  in 
their  drama  they  depicted  human 
impotence.  Yes,  the  drama  of  the  Greeks 
was  an  Oriental  product,  in  spirit  and 
in  form.  The  plot  in  their  drama  was 
a  convention  symbolizing  the  unknown 
god,  Fate, — and  the  canons  of  this 
convention  were  as  rigid  as  are  the 
canons  laid  down  for  the  sculpture  of 
a  Buddha  image  in  the  East.  The  plot, 
that  is  to  say,  the  idea  of  Fate,  can  be 
conventionalized  without  violence,  but 

36 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

individuals  cannot  be  so  conventionalized. 
As  it  is  you  confuse  human  individuality 
with  dramatic  personality,  forgetting 
that  in  the  drama  a  person  is  the  wearer 
of  a  mask,  the  bearer  of  a  role.  You 
imagine  that  your  persons  are  individuals; 
and  here  is  the  beginning  of  falsehood 
and  error.  You  present  one  aspect,  a 
fraction  of  an  individual,  and  instead 
of  admitting  that  this  fraction  is  in 
truth  a  dramatic  fiction,  you  maintain 
that  it  is  a  real  individual.  But  the 
essence  of  an  individual  is  that  he  is 
indivisible,  and  must  for  ever  remain 
whole.  There  is  an  essential  integrity 
about  a  human  character,  which  renders 
any  fractional  representation  of  it 
inevitably  false.  Of  course,  the  fiction 
that  a  dramatic  person  is  a  complete 
character  is  necessary  to  your  drama, 
where  you  make  the  characters  create 
the  action.  You  could  not  persuade  the 
most  sympathetic  audience  that  half- 
characters  could  create  action — that 

37  D 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

rugged  lie  the  public  would  refuse  to 
swallow — so  to  make  your  fiction 
plausible,  you  persuade  the  public  that 
your  half-characters  are  whole  charac- 
ters, and  the  lie,  thus  smoothed  and 
rounded  off,  is  apparently  quite  accept- 
able. What  your  public  ignores,  however, 
is  that  the  progress  of  your  action, 
depending,  as  it  does,  on  your  characters, 
must  necessarily  be  halting  because  your 
characters  are  maimed.  Your  action,  in 
fact,  is  lopsided,  it  has  literally  an  ethical 
twist,  and  like  a  centipede  with  some  of  its 
members  amputated  unsymmetrically,  it 
crawls  for  ever  in  a  vicious  circle.  Some 
of  your  more  perspicacious  dramatists, 
indeed,  have  realised  this  fact.  Like  all 
your  artists  they  are  self-conscious  in 
their  expression,  and  they  are  conscious, 
too,  that  their  expression  expresses 
nothing,  that  their  'action'  takes 
nobody  anywhither.  So  with  that  deli- 
cious naivete  which  alone,  if  present, 
justifies  self-consciousness,  they  call 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

their  plays  problem  plays.  Some  of 
your  novelists,  too,  with  an  ingenuous  lisp, 
call  their  novels  problem  novels,  and  your 
art  critics,  convinced  that  the  problem 
is  the  last  word  in  art,  go  to  the  Academy 
and  look  for  problems  in  pictures. 
I  am  convinced  that  the  romantic 
youth  of  the  next  generation  will  go  to 
the  Lakes,  and  look  for  problems  under 
stones  and  riddles  in  running  brooks. 
Yes,  and  when  your  dramatists  do  not 
embarrass  you  with  their  problems,  they 
harass  you  with  their  propaganda.  While 
half  of  them  are  framing  riddles  the 
other  half  solves  them  —  garrulous 
sphinxes  and  indiscreet  oracles.  But 
why  have  you  let  pamphleteering 
die  out  as  a  vocation  ?  In  a  by-gone 
age  M.  Brieux  and  Mr.  Galsworthy 
might  have  found  their  calling.  Dickens, 
with  all  his  humour,  mistook  the  func- 
tion of  the  novelist  when  he  used 
the  novel  to  reform  prison  laws. 
Remember  that  when  Milton  wished  to 

39  D  2 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

treat  of  the  freedom  of  the  Press,  he 
wisely  wrote  a  pamphlet  instead  of  a 
pastoral  poem.  Your  modern  dramatists 
are  capable  of  writing  five-act  tragedies 
in  blank  verse  to  abolish  the  censorship 
of  the  stage.  Although  Aristotle  says 
that  in  a  tragedy  the  characters  must 
be  persons  in  high  estate,  even  so,  I 
refuse  to  believe  that  with  such  a  theme 
the  Lord  Chamberlain  would  make  a 
successful  protagonist.  No,  your  dramat- 
ists have  no  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things.  Like  your  politicians,  they 
would  not  hesitate  even  to  *  drag  the 
Crown  '  into  the  most  paltry  discussion. 
You  are  clamouring  for  a  National 
Theatre.  If  you  had  it  I  am  certain 
you  would  abuse  it,  for  you  would  use 
it  to  discuss  national  institutions  in.  Mr. 
Shaw  would  no  doubt  produce  a  *  play ' 
called  '  The  Drama — a  speech}  wherein 
he  would  explain  that  the  House  of 
Commons  should  be  disestablished,  and 
that  dramatists  should  be  paid  £400  a 

4o 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

year  by  the  State  since  playwrights 
really  do  the  work  of  Parliamentarians. 
Meanwhile,  what  will  become  of  the 
drama  as  a  form  of  art  ?  " 

"  Do  you  think  then  that  it  detracts 
from  the  dignity  of  an  art  to  be  used  as 
an  instrument  of  social  reform  ?  " 

"  Come,  come,  I  appeal  to  your  sense 
of  decorum.  Would  not  a  proper  Greek 
have  been  shocked  if  Zeus  deserted  the 
majesty  of  his  throne  on  Olympus, 
usurped  the  function  of  the  lame  god 
Hephaestus,  and  set  about  tinkering  ? 
Would  you  turn  your  Muses  into  maid- 
servants?" 

"  Yet,  a  moment  ago,  you  said  that  art 
for  art's  sake  is  a  tautology,  or  a  contra- 
diction in  terms,  and  now  you  complain 
that  we  make  the  art  of  the  drama  serve 
a  useful  purpose." 

"  A  shrewd  American  observer  once 

41 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

remarked  that  the  English  have  no  idea 
of  good  and  evil,  unless  it  be  of  a  moral 
good  and  evil.  Similarly  you  seem  to 
have  no  idea  of  utility  save  of  a  purely 
utilitarian  utility.  But  there  are  kinds 
of  utility.  The  fact  was  brought  home 
to  me  by  a  remark  of  a  young  friend  of 
mine  at  Oxford  the  other  day.  He  was 
dining  with  me  at  a  restaurant,  and  glan- 
cing over  the  menu,  he  suddenly 
exclaimed,  '  That's  useful.'  On  enquiry 
I  learnt  that  the  thing  he  thus  designated 
as  useful  was  a  peche  Melba.  The 
designation  was  curious,  but  after  all,  it 
was  fundamentally  reasonable.  The  peche 
Melba  was  useless  from  the  utilitarian 
point  of  view  of  nourishment.  Still  it 
was  quite  useful,  I  might  say  it  was 
organic,  in  the  whole  design  of  the 
dinner  my  friend  had  in  mind." 

"  Your   friend    is    a    young    epicure 
then  ?  " 

"  He    appeared   so   to    me,    but    he 
42 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

apologised  for  the  fact  by  explaining 
that  a  school  of  cookery  had  recently 
been  established  at  Oxford, — that  he 
was  a  critic  of  cookery,  and  therefore  an 
artist  in  it,  for  the  critic,  he  said,  is 
artist." 

"  Did  you  know  that  your  friend  was 
plagiarizing  Oscar  Wilde?" 

"  I  did,  and  I  drew  his  attention  to  the 
circumstance.  But  he  excused  himself 
by  saying  that  Wilde  held  that  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  plagiarism,  and  that  to 
prove  it  Wilde  plagiarized  himself  as 
often  as  possible." 

"  An  interesting  young  man  !  In  my 
time  the  young  men  at  Oxford  did  not 
claim  to  be  artists  in  cookery  on  the 
ground  that  they  were  critics  of  it." 

"  Oh  no, — '  Inasmuch  as  ye  are  critics, 
ye  are  artists,'  is  the  cry  after  Walter 

43 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Pater.  Before  that  they  said  with 
Matthew  Arnold,  '  Inasmuch  as  ye  are 
artists,  ye  are  moralists.'  But  to  return 
to  our  peche  Melba.  As  that  was  useful 
inasmuch  as  it  had  its  place  in  the 
scheme  of  my  friend's  dinner,  so  art  is 
useful  when  it  has  its  place  in  the  scheme 
of  life.  But,  as  I  remarked  before,  art 
for  art's  sake  has  no  place  in  any  scheme. 
Art  for  morality's  sake,  though  less 
absurd,  is  still  a  perversion.  You  seem 
to  ignore  that  there  is  a  middle  way 
between  these  two  improprieties." 

"  And  what  is  that  ?  " 

"  Briefly,  art  for  decoration's  sake 
otherwise  art  for  life's  sake.  Art  holds 
the  same  place  in  human  life  as  the 
eye-brows  do  in  the  human  face.  The 
eye-brow  is  decorative.  It  is  there  not 
for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
face,  and  it  is  there  because  nature  wills 
it  so.  You  self-concious  artists  are 

44 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

assiduously  trying  to  cultivate  eye-brows 
in  space.  True  art,  like  the  eye-brow  is 
a  spontaneous  growth.  Yes,  art  is  a 
natural  excrescence  of  life  which  we 
Orientals  passively  accept,  but  you  are 
so  sophisticated  that  you  would  have 
your  lilies  and  roses  toil  and  spin,  hoping 
that  thereby  they  will  add  to  their 
beauty." 

"  You  are  severe.  I  suppose  the  creed 
of  art  for  art's  sake  is  somewhat  of  an 
exaggeration,  but  there  is  reason  in  the 
position.  I  admit  the  charge  of  sophis- 
tication that  you  urge  against  us.  After 
all,  knowledge  to  us  is  the  greatest  good, 
and  if  we  act  in  a  certain  way,  we  act  in 
the  light  of  what  we  know.  Let  us  say 
then,  first  that  we  realize  that  art  is 
concerned  with  beauty.  The  excellence 
of  art  in  general  then  is  beauty,  and 
there  are  several  arts  each  with  its  own 
excellence.  We  believe  then  that  art  will 
realize  its  own  excellence  independently 

45 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

and  in  isolation,  and  the  several  arts 
their  own  excellences  likewise.  Our 
artists,  each  in  his  own  province,  study 
the  properties  and  conditions  of  their 
arts,  and  so  they  produce  works  charac- 
teristically excellent  in  their  kind.  Our 
sciences  too  we  regard  in  this  way.  We 
consider  each  science  as  an  end  in  itself, 
and  we  have  specialists  in  the  several 
sciences.  You  cannot  deny  that  in 
physics,  physiology,  psychology,  progress 
has  been  made  since  each  of  these 
sciences  was  isolated,  studied  separately, 
regarded  as  an  end  in  itself.  So  with 
art,  we  believe  that  art  will  realize  its 
end,  beauty,  in  fullest  completion  when 
pursued  independently,  for  its  own 
sake." 

"  And  all  this  comes  of  sophistication  ! 
Strange  that  you  have  not  yet  realised 
that  knowledge  is  an  evil,  though  your 
Bible  tells  you  that  the  fruit  of  the 
forbidden  tree  was  the  fruit  of  the  tree 

46 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

of  knowledge.  Knowledge  is  man's 
primal  curse,  when  sought,  as  it  was 
sought  by  Eve,  for  its  own  sake — from 
curiosity  that  is  to  say.  Well,  science 
cultivated  for  its  own  sake  has,  among 
other  things,  inflicted  the  curse  of 
machinery  on  you,  and  art  followed  for 
its  own  sake  has  removed  the  blessing  of 
beauty  from  your  lives.  You  say  that 
each  of  your  arts,  followed  in  isolation, 
has  attained  its  perfection, — but  tell  me, 
if  I  wished  to  see  the  art  of  painting  in 
London,  where  could  I  see  it  ?  " 

"  Oh,  at  the  Academy,  in  the  different 
galleries  and  collections,  in  several 
exhibitions." 

"  And  if  I  wished  to  hear  music?" 

'  There   are    several    good  concerts, 
at  the  Queen's  Hall,  for  instance." 

"  Architecture?" 

47 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 
11  There  are  buildings  around  you." 

"  Dancing?" 

"  Well,  if  you  wished  to  see  good 
dancing,  I  suppose  you  would  have  to 
go  to  some  of  the  music-halls,  the 
Palace  or  the  Coliseum.  As  you  say, 
our  ball-room  dancing  could  hardly  be 
called  a  form  of  art." 

"  But  is  there  no  graceful  dancing  in 
the  country — in  your  villages  ?  " 

"  I  am  afraid  not.  Rustic  dances  on 
the  village  green  belong  to  a  by-gone 
age.  Even  the  Irish  jig  and  the 
Highland  fling  have  come  to  the  halls." 

"  There,  I  suppose,  to  attain  their  own 
excellence.  And  sculpture  ?  " 

"  In  galleries  again,  and  images  of 
our  heroes  in  public  places, — and  of 
course,  in  cemeteries." 

"  And   if  I  wished  to  converse   with 

48 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

your  wise  men,  your  philosophers,  where 
could  I  meet  them  ?  " 


"  Our  philosophers  are  to  be  found  at 
our  seats  of  learning,  naturally,  at  our 
Universities,  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
for  instance." 

"  You  claimed  a  little  while  ago  that 
expressive  art  is  living  art,  but  now  you 
have  proved  conclusively  that  all  your 
arts  are  dead  arts.  Has  it  never  struck 
you  that  museums  are  the  mausoleums 
of  the  arts  ?  Your  muses  are  appar- 
ently not  virgins  but  widows,  each 
emulating  the  Carian  Artemisia.  When 
art  flourishes  there  are  no  museums. 
There  were  no  museums  in  the  East 
till  you  Westerners  introduced  them 
there,  and  still  we  don't  understand 
them.  What  should  we  do  with  coffins 
when  we  have  no  dead  ?  Picture 
galleries  are  the  mortuary  chapels  of 
painting.  In  Mediaeval  Europe  there 

49 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

were  no  picture  galleries  ;  we  have  none 
in  the  East  to-day.     In  the  Middle  Age 
in  Europe  painting  was  a  decorative  art, 
and  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  art  of  painting 
in  Europe  attained  its  highest  excellence 
some    centuries    ago,    before    you   had 
evolved  your  theory  of  expression.  Then 
the  arts  were  content  to  flourish  side  by 
side,  and  religion  wedded  them  to  life, 
for  artists  created  not  to  give  expres- 
sion to  their  personal  emotions,  but  ad 
major  em  Dei  gloriam,  and  their  works 
reflect  their  spirit.  Western  art  has  been 
most  successful  when  it  was  meant  to  be 
purely  decorative.     You  will   remember 
Michael    Angelo's    decoration    of     the 
ceiling  of   the  Sistine  Chapel,  and  the 
frescoes  by   Ghirlandajo  decorating  the 
walls     of     Santa     Maria     Novella     in 
Florence.     Now    your  artists    self-con- 
sciously paint  pictures  for  the  Academy. 
I  went  to  the  Academy  a  few  days  ago, 
and  I  couldn't  decide  which  were  the 
more  self-conscious,  the  pictures  or  the 

50 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

visitors — both  seemed  to  be  intensely 
aware  that  people  were  looking  at  them. 
Here,  then,  is  an  art,  splendid  in  isolation, 
complacently  contemplating  its  own 
perfection.  Believe  me,  when  I  first 
heard  your  Western  phrase,  '  the 
worship  of  Beauty,'  I  thought  at 
first  it  was  only  a  manner  of  speaking. 
I  see  now  that  you  take  your  worship 
very  seriously.  Mais,  Messieurs,  vous 
vous  donnes  en  spectacle. 

And  to  hear  music  or  singing,  you  tell 
me,  I  must  go  to  a  concert.  Has  it  never 
occurred  to  you  that  music  and  song  at 
these  self-conscious  concerts  are  as  out 
of  place  as  painting  in  a  gallery  ?  Music 
and  song  are  not  living,  but  dead  and 
curiosities,  when  they  are  thus  interred 
in  concert  rooms.  A  Mass  sung  at  one 
of  these  concerts  is  as  pathetic  as  a 
religious  painting  removed  from  its  proper 
setting  in  a  church  and  pinned  to  the 
wall  of  a  museum.  Do  you  kill  your 
butterflies  too  on  purpose  that  they  may 

Si 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

attain  their  excellence  in  a  glass  case  ?  I 
remember  you  told  me  that  religious 
music,  which  is  a  decorative  art,  is  dead 
music.  Which  is  more  quick,  the  music 
that  in  church  assists  the  worshipper 
in  his  praise,  the  music  that  rouses 
and  uplifts  all  alike,  or  this  concert- 
room  music  of  yours,  that  is  heard  only 
by  a  few  and  affects  only  an  infinitesimal 
part  of  the  people  ?  Religious  music,  you 
said,  is  dead  music,  a  good  instance  of 
hieratic,  conventional  art.  You  must  re- 
cast your  notions  of  what  is  life  and  what 
is  death  in  art.  The  conception  of  evolu- 
tion is  an  obsession  with  modern 
Europeans  to  such  an  extent  that  you 
think  that  all  change  means  life,  and 
what  does  not  move,  or,  as  you  say, 
progress,  is  dead.  You  confound  life 
and  mechanism,  and  you  forget  too  that 
there  are  processes  of  decay.  An  art 
may  be  stationary  for  centuries,  and 
remain  vital  in  its  effects,  and  the  life  of 
an  art  is  seen  in  its  effects.  But  you 

52 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

look  to  the  product  alone,  and  not  to  the 
effect,  and  so  at  your  concerts  and  your 
art-exhibitions  you  show  your  still-born 
artistic  progeny. 

When  I  asked  you  where  I  might 
see  your  architecture,  you  said,  '  There 
are  buildings  around  you.'  There  are 
buildings  and  buildings.  There  are 
tin  tabernacles,  and  there  are  cathedrals. 
Demosthenes  referred  to  the  public 
buildings  as  one  of  the  chief  glories 
of  Athens.  The  Middle  Age  in 
Europe  was  an  era  of  magnificence  in 
architecture.  But  nowadays  you  build 
no  beautiful  buildings.  You  divide  your 
arts  into  the  fine  or  expressive,  and  the 
useful  or  applied.  In  the  East  all  our 
arts  are  useful  and  decorative,  so  that 
when  we  make  a  building,  we  make  it 
beautiful.  '  All  art  is  useless/  says 
Oscar  Wilde,  in  the  preface  to  '  Dorian 
Gray.'  We  say  on  the  contrary,  '  All 
art  is  useful.'  Yes,  even  poetry  and 
music  are  useful  arts.  You  are  too  con- 

53  E 


On  the    Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

scious  of  the  distinction  between  requisite 
and  exquisite.  We  try  to  make  the 
requisite  things  also  the  exquisite  things 
of  life." 

"  That  sounds  idyllic — almost  pre- 
viously so." 

"  It  is  true  none  the  less,  for  in  the 
East  we  live  our  idylls.  As  an  instance 
of  the  preciousness  of  our  common 
things,  I  might  cite  our  every-day 
language.  An  English  adventurer,  Knox, 
writing  of  Ceylon  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  says : — '  In  this  country  the 
ploughman  speaks  as  elegantly  as  the 
courtier.'  You  can  divine  the  artistic 
temper  of  a  people  whose  useful  language 
is  fine.  It  had  not  occurred  to  us  to 
reserve  the  art  of  graceful  diction  for 
vellum-bound  bibelots — therein  to  attain 
its  proper  excellence  ;  though,  I  suppose, 
the  idea  of  a  perspiring  ploughman 
chanting  the  verses  of  a  precious  poet. 

54 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

while  he  drives  his  team  of  oxen  would 
not  strike  an  Occidental  in  other  than  a 
humorous  light.  But,  believe  me,  there 
is  no  element  of  humour  in  it,  for  the 
ploughman,  though  he  thus  chant  his 
verse,  is  untouched  by  any  aesthetic 
movement,  and  he  speaks  the  language 
of  the  court  singer  because  he  knows 
no  other. 

You  worshippers  of  beauty  approach 
art  too  literally  as  a  sacrament,  and 
for  fear  of  familiarity,  I  suppose,  you 
do  not  approach  it  very  frequently, — and 
when  you  do,  you  first  self-consciously 
recollect  yourselves  into  a  mood  of 
devotion.  Your  artists  are  your  high 
priests.  What  does  Horace  say? 

'  Favete  linguis.    Carmina  non  prius 
Audita  Musarum  Sacerdos, 
Virginibus  puerisque  canto.' 

Our  artists  are  our  ministers,  and  if 
our  art  is  a  sacrament  at  all,  it  is  a 
viaticum  not  too  good  for  our  daily  food. 

55  E  2 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

The  Greeks  knew  that  art  was  made  for 
man,  and  man  was  not  made  for'art. 
They  did  not  give  the  artist's  calling  the 
exaggerated  dignity  which  you  give  it 
nowadays,  for  they  considered  the  artist 
an  artizan.  Not  that  the  Greeks  had 
no  reverence  for  art.  And  we  Orientals, 
though  we  look  on  our  artists  as  our 
ministers,  revere  art  to  this  extent,  that 
we  strive  ever  to  preserve  it  impersonal 
and  universal.  For  the  intimate  is 
pollution  in  art,  and  vulgarity  speaks 
always  in  the  first  person.  An  obscene 
work  to  us  is  one  wherein  the  artist  lays 
bare  his  soul,  and  many  of  your  modern 
artists  we  should  consider  spiritual 
prostitutes.  Art,  you  say,  exists  for  its 
own  sake,  but  you  have  gone  a  step 
further  and  made  your  artists  ends  in 
themselves.  With  you  the  artistic 
temperament  covers  a  multitude  of  social 
sins.  You  would  forgive  your  artists  a 
crime  against  humanity,  provided  they 
gave  you  in  return  a  document  humain. 

56 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

What  wonder  that  your  artists  seek  new 
and  curious  sins  for  art's  sake  ?  Art 
must  progress — ri 'est  ce  pas — and  life 
must  keep  pace  with  art.  '  Life  for  art's 
sake,'  cry  your  artists,  and  they  sur- 
render their  lives  to  art.  Our  art  is 
conventional ;  yes,  and  our  artists  are 
content  to  be  bons  bourgeois. 

Accustomed  then   always  to  express 
themselves,  I   do  not  wonder  that  your 
artists  are  at  a  loss  when  they  are  called 
upon  to  produce  a  beautiful  thing  of  use. 
The  intensest  personal  emotion  will  not 
produce    a    beautiful    public     building. 
In  architecture,    the    artist    necessarily 
falls  back  on  a  more  universal  feeling ; 
his    inspiration    inevitably    comes    from 
the    consciousness   of   his    people,  and 
architecture   more    than    any    other  art 
reflects  a  collective  mood.      Nowadays 
there  is  apparently  no  national  sentiment 
among  you  vital  enough  to  lend  dignity 
and  grace  to  the  public  buildings  that 

57 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

you  make.  Religion  is  no  longer  a 
living  force  with  you,  so  you  build  no 
great  churches.  The  new  Cathedral 
at  Westminster  is  the  only  church 
conceived  and  built  in  Europe  in  recent 
times,  in  the  spirit  of  the  Middle  Age, 
— but  then  the  spirit  of  the  Middle  Age 
survives  in  Europe  to-day  only  within 
the  pale  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Your 
art  would  be  less  paltry  to-day,  if 
religion  were  now,  as  it  once  was,  a 
force  in  your  lives." 

"  You  remarked  that  art  for  morality's 
sake  is  a  perversion.  I  don't  under- 
stand how  art  for  religion's  sake  could 
be  less  so.  After  all,  religion  and 
morality  are  the  same  thing." 

11  Religion  and  morality  are  absolutely 
distinct  from  each  other.  That  this 
distinctness  is  a  fact  may  be  seen  in  the 
essential  difference  between  an  art  in- 
spired by  religion  and  an  art  inspired  by 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

morality.  With  you  morality  has  taken 
the  place  of  religion,  and  your  art  has 
suffered  thereby.  It  seems  to  me  that 
you  Northern  Europeans  have  inter- 
preted the  Scripture  text,  '  Lay  up 
for  yourselves  treasures  in  Heaven ' 
rather  too  literally.  You  seem  to  have 
a  notion  that  Heaven  is  somewhere  in 
Lombard  Street.  You  fancy  that  Heaven 
is  a  huge  banking  concern.  You  start 
an  account  there,  you  deposit  to  credit 
whenever  you  perform  a  meritorious 
action, — Kant  has  explained  to  you 
precisely  what  kind  of  actions  have 
moral  worth, — and  when  you  commit 
a  sin,  why — you  issue  a  cheque  on  the 
funds  deposited.  If  that  is  Heaven, 
the  recording  angel  must  be  an  expert 
in  the  art  of  book-keeping  by  double 
entry.  We  still  believe,  as  you  did 
once  on  a  time,  that  '  High  Heaven 
rejects  the  nicely-calculated  lore  of 
less  or  more.'  We  do  not  calculate 
the  moral  worth  of  our  acts,  but  worship 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

God  freely  as  our  inclination  leads 
us — '  ex  abundantia  cordis  os  loquitur.' 
Your  Kants  and  your  Spinozas  have  pro- 
duced metaphysical  gods  for  you  whom 
you  worship  with  your  intellects  as  you 
might  worship  the  idea  of  the  triangle. 

*  Art  for  art's  sake — thought  for  thought's 
sake.'     Knowledge  is  an  end,  and  your 
thinkers    self-consciously  devote    them- 
selves to  thought  for  its  own  sake.      But 
self-conscious   thinking   defeats  its  pur- 
pose, and  becomes  mere   psychological 
analysis.     Introspection    has    produced 
your    metaphysics     and     your     various 

*  Absolutes '  and  '  Beings,'  as  still-born  as 
your  artistic  creations.  God  is  living  when 
at  the  end  of  the  day's  labour  the  peasant 
makes  the  sign  of  the  Cross  and  recites 
the  Angelus,  or  when  he  turns  his  face  to 
the  west  and  worships  the  symbol  of  the 
sun.    There  is  no  God  when  the  peasant 
is  expected  at  eventide  to  meditate  on 
'  an  infinity  of  infinite  attributes  infinitely 
modified.'    You  have  evolved  a  futurist 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

art.  I  am  afraid  your  modern  religion  too 
belongs  exclusively  to  the  future,  for  it 
certainly  has  no  place  in  the  life  of  the 
present.  Your  art  is  for  the  elect  alone, 
and  your  religion  is  academic.  Your 
thinkers  have  created  their  *  absolutes '  in 
seclusion.  Do  you  not  imprison  your  wise 
men,  your  philosophers,  in  universities  ? 
The  Magi  of  the  East  journeyed 
through  many  lands,  following  a  strange 
star,  until  they  discovered  the  Saviour, 
and  worshipped  him  with  offering  of  gold, 
and  frankincense,  and  myrrh.  Your 
modern  Magi  are  busy  with  their  intellects 
trying  to  explain,  or  to  explain  away,  both 
the  star  and  the  Saviour. " 

"  It  is  strange  that  you  should  depre- 
cate thought  in  this  manner,  seeing  that 
in  the  East,  in  India,  you  had  your  caste 
of  thinkers,  the  Brahmins.  Surely  that 
was  carrying  the  principle  of  the  speciali- 
zation of  thought  to  its  extremest  limit." 

"  It  was  not  thought  for  its  own  sake, 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

however,  but  thought  for  the  sake  of 
society.  The  fruit  of  this  thought  was 
seen  in  the  social  order  of  India,  which 
was  a  partial  realisation  of  Plato's  ideal 
republic — the  nearest  approach  to  its 
realisation  that  has  ever  been  made. 
The  philosophers,  the  Brahmins,  were 
supported  by  the  auxiliaries,  the 
Kshattriyas,  and  below  these  were  the 
artizans,  the  Sudras.  The  philosophers  in 
India  were  the  law-givers  and  statesmen. 
In  the  East  we  interpret  '  philosophy ' 
literally  as  love  of  wisdom,  and  wisdom 
in  the  last  analysis  is  practical.  You 
often  speak  of  the  abstract  thought  of 
India,  but  our  thinkers  were  our  law- 
givers, and  our  knowledge  was  designed 
for  use.  Your  philosophy,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  in  fact  abstract  speculation, 
utterly  withdrawn  from  life." 

"  What  of  the  contemplative  ascetics 
of  the  East?  You  will  not  deny 
that  they  believe  in  contemplation  for 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

its   own  sake,  just  as  our  philosophers 
believe  in  disinterested  speculation." 

"  That  is  a  common  Western  fallacy. 
Eastern  ascetics  do  not  believe  in  con- 
templation for  its  own  sake.  They  are 
convinced  that  life  is  an  evil,  and  they 
hold  that  thought  too,  as  one  of  the 
activities  of  life,  is  an  evil.  Their  ideal 
is  the  negation  of  both  physical  and 
mental  life.  Such  an  attitude  is  rational, 
and  is  consistent.  Aristotle  says  that 
happiness  is  complete  activity.  The 
Eastern  ascetic  holds  that  happiness 
is  complete  inactivity.  Both  views  are 
reasonable,  when  we  remember  that  they 
regard  life  from  two  different  points  of  view. 
But  whereas  the  latter  view  is  complete 
reasonable,  taken  in  itself,  the  former  is 
intelligible  only  when  we  understand  that 
activity  means  activity  towards  some- 
thing, not  activity  for  its  own  sake.  Dis- 
interested speculation  is  possible  to  the 
Deity  alone,  and  your  notion  of  thought 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

for  its  own  sake  is  little  short  of 
blasphemy.  Men  perceive  only  what 
they  are  interested  in,  and  when  they 
perceive  they  desire.  The  theoretic  or 
speculative  life,  the  life  of  beholding,  is 
so  called  by  analogy  with  the  physical 
function  of  sight.  The  intellect  is  the 
eye  of  the  soul.  Now  sight,  as  one  of 
your  own  psychologists  has  acutely 
observed,  '  is  a  prophetic  function.* 
Seeing,  in  other  words,  is  not  the 
supreme  but  the  initial  act.  We 
instinctively  go  on  to  desire  what  we 
perceive.  A  baby,  for  instance,  almost 
mechanically  extends  its  hand  to  grasp 
any  object  of  whose  presence  it  becomes 
aware  by  sight.  You  may  have  observed 
another  curious  phenomenon.  Why  does 
a  woman  instinctively  close  her  eyes 
when  she  is  kissed  ?  It  is  because,  at  a 
certain  point  of  attainment,  the  sense  of 
sight  becomes  incompatible  with  the 
other  senses.  Sight,  having  fulfilled 
its  task  of  prophecy,  becomes  a  positive 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

hindrance.  The  case  is  similar  with  the 
spiritual  sight — the  function  of  cognition. 
We  contemplate,  but  contemplation  is 
only  a  step  towards  desire.  And  this  is 
the  meaning  of  mysticism.  Cognition 
is  the  prophecy,  of  which  spiritual 
possession  is  the  fulfilment." 

"  Well,  you  have  shown  that  your 
thought  is  religious  and  mystical,  while 
our  thought  is  secular." 

"  And  something  else  I  hope — that 
your  thought  is  academic,  while  our 
thought  is  popular.  Yes,  religious  thought 
is  always  the  profane  thought,  while 
secular  thought  is  esoteric.  But  of 
course  the  fact  that  thought  or  art  is 
popular  is  their  sufficient  condemnation 
in  your  eyes.  You  are  all  humanitarians, 
you  are  all  eager  to  do  good  to  humanity 
provided  humanity  does  not  assume 
equality  with  yourselves.  You  are 
philanthropists,  soit,  you  love  mankind, 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

but  for  yourselves,  you  are  supermen. 
Consider  the  meaning  of  the  word 
Religion.  Does  it  not  primarily  mean  a 
binding  ?  And  when  this  bond  unites  a 
whole  race  together,  does  not  the  thought, 
the  art,  the  living  of  that  people  become 
popular  ?  " 

"  Yes,  religion  is  a  bond,  but  if  it 
unites  a  whole  community,  it  separates 
that  community  from  the  rest  of  man- 
kind. You  said  that  an  art  inspired  by 
religion  is  different  from  an  art  inspired 
by  morality.  You  are  right  in  this 
sense,  that  a  moral  art,  being  freed  from 
the  fetters  of  one  particular  religion, 
appeals  to  all  mankind.  A  moral  art  is  a 
human  art." 

"  Humanism  as  an  artistic  creed  has 
its  place  among  the  other  cruelties  of  the 
Renaissance.  It  was  born  of  the  same 
spirit  that  produced  the  Borgias.  Do 
you  remember  Pater's  concluding  essay  in 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

his  volume  of  studies  on  the  Renaissance? 
1  Not    the    fruit   of  experience,'  he  says 
there,  *  but  experience  itself  is  the  end.' 
And  again,  *  Not  to  discriminate  every 
moment   some    passionate    attitude    in 
those  about  us,  and  in  the  brilliancy  of 
their  gifts  some  tragic  dividing  of  forces 
on  their  ways,  is,  on  this  short  day  of 
frost  and  sun,  to  sleep  before  evening.' 
Do  you  not  see  the  essential  inhumanity 
of  this  point  of  view?    Is  not  Humanism 
the  gospel  of  egoism  ?     You  say  that  an 
art  inspired  by  religion  appeals  only  to 
those  who  profess  that  religion,  while  a 
moral  art  appeals   to  mankind.    You  do 
not  realize  that  your  dream  is  impossible 
of  fulfilment,  and  fortunately  so,  for  your 
dream  is  a  nightmare.      Both  Plato  and 
Aristotle  wisely  confined  mankind  within 
the  limits  of  a  city-state,  and  when  we 
Orientals  talk  of  humanity,  we  mean  our 
own  community ;  for   parochialism,    not 
cosmopolitanism,    is     the    true    creed. 
There  is  one  earth,  but  there  are  many 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

degrees     of     latitude     and     longitude. 
Different     climates     produce     different 
breeds  of  men  as  they   breed  different 
kinds  of  plants.     Art,  I  said,  is  a  logical 
conclusion  with  life  for   the  major,  and 
religion  for  the  minor  premise.     Art  after 
all  is  a  thing  of  use,  and  religion  too  is 
born  of  necessity.     Men  conceive  their 
gods  in  conformity  with  the   needs   of 
their  life,  and  needs  vary  with  the  climate. 
The  different  conceptions  of  the  gods, 
always  the  sublimest  conceptions  of  a 
race,  are  the  different  motives  of  artistic 
creation.     So  that  you  cannot  produce 
a  universal  art  till  you  produce  a  universal 
religion,  and  I  doubt  if  you  will  produce 
a  universal  religion  till  you  have  produced 
one  universal    climate.      You   seem    to 
think  this  last  possible,  for  in  anticipa- 
tion of  the  achievement  you  are  trying 
to  persuade   the  human  race  to  clothe 
itself  in  the  European  style.      Art  is  an 
expression,  yes — just  as   clothes  are  an 
expression.    But  what  do  rational  clothes 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

reveal  ?  The  secrets,  not  of  your  soul, 
but  of  the  weather.  You  will  see  the 
absurdity  of  an  art  that  is  to  appeal  to 
all  mankind.  The  Parthenon  expressed 
the  climate  of  Attica  and  the  worship 
of  Pallas.  The  Taj  Mahal  expresses 
the  climate  of  India  and  the  creed  of 
Islam.  The  Crystal  Palace  does  not 
express  Christianity  ;  nor  does  it  express 
the  peculiarities  of  the  English  climate  ; 
for  that  reason  it  expresses  the 
peculiarities  of  English  taste." 

"  The  Crystal  Palace  is  not  a  church. 
It  could  not  express  Christianity  in  any 


case." 


"  I  know — it  is  not  a  church,  but  a 
Palace  of  Art,  a  Temple  of  Beauty  in 
fact.  But  art  is  meant  to  build  temples, 
not  to  dwell  in  them.  St.  Stephen's  is 
not  a  church,  but  as  architecture,  your 
Houses  of  Parliament  do  express 
Christianity  none  the  less.  Religion  is 

69  F 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  minor  premise  of  art.  Christianity 
gave  you  the  conventions  of  the  Gothic 
style  in  the  art  of  building.  Religion 
supplies  the  necessary  motives  for 
decoration.  The  end  of  art  is  first,  use, 
then  decoration.  Expression  is  not  a 
property,  but  an  accident  of  art.  You 
make  expression  the  primary  end  of 
art,  but  the  worst  of  such  self-conscious 
expression  is  that  it  always  expresses 
something  beside  what  you  mean  to  say. 
The  Crystal  Palace  was  meant  to  express 
your  love  of  art.  Well,  it  tells  us  of 
your  love  of  art,  but  it  tells  us  also 
that  it  was  a  misplaced  affection." 

"  I  suppose  architecture  as  a  medium 
of  expression  is  sometimes  unreliable. 
But  that  is  because  architecture  is  not 
primarily  an  expressive,  but  a  useful  art. 
Consider  however  some  of  our  purely 
expressive  arts, — music,  poetry,  or  the 
art  of  the  novel,  which  are  free  and  un- 
hampered by  considerations  of  utility. 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Expression,  I  still  maintain,  is  the  end 
of  art,  and  true  art  is  purely  expressive. 
Do  these  arts  fail  to  fulfil  their  function  ? 
I  spoke  of  an  art  which  might  appeal  to 
all  mankind.     This  art  must  certainly  be 
dissociated  from  utility,  for  as  you  say, 
needs   vary  with  the  climate.     Do  you 
think    the   idea   of   a  universal  art,  ex- 
pressing in  a  free  medium  the  common 
feelings  of  men,  their  vital  emotions,  to 
be  really  an  impossible  dream  ?    I  believe 
on    the   contrary    that   the    dream    has 
already  been  realized, —  in  the  drama  of 
Shakespeare,  for  instance.     An  art  that 
mirrors   mankind   must  appeal  to  men. 
Even    our    modern    novels,   which   you 
decry,  have  their  merits  as  portraits  of 
human  manners.     I   do  not  understand 
how  any  cultivated  mind  could  fail  to  be 
fascinated   by   these   narratives   of   the 
adventures  of  the   soul.     The  analysis 
of  the  common   emotions   of    mankind 
could  not  be  without  interest  to  a  human 
being." 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  There  are  no  emotions  common  to 
mankind.  What  mankind  has  in  common 
is  a  capacity  for  emotion.  As  for  adven- 
tures of  the  soul,  they  are  very  well  in 
their  way,  but  most  of  your  adventurers 
of  the  soul  seem  to  end  by  discovering 
their  own  bodies.  You  do  not  appear  to 
have  observed,  however,  that  the  multi- 
plication of  these  spiritual  Odysseys 
must,  of  necessity,  kill  the  possibility  of 
spiritual  adventure." 

"  Why  so  ?  Tales  of  adventure  rouse 
curiosity,  and  stir  the  venturous  spirit  of 
their  readers." 

"  Your  tales  of  spiritual  adventure  do 
not  whet  curiosity,  but  satisfy  it.  I 
remarked  that  your  modern  drama  and 
novel  are  didactic.  They  impart  informa- 
tion, and  they  impart  all  the  information 
that  is  available.  Your  human  portraits 
are  too  realistic.  Your  art,  as  you 
say,  is  consciously  expressive.  Your 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

psychological  analysis  of  human  emotion 
makes  humanity  incapable  of   emotion. 
Does  not  Yeats  say  that  the  West  is 
emotionally    bankrupt?     You    are     in- 
capable of   emotion   because  you  know 
all    about     it.      Your    dramatists    and 
novelists,    specialists     in     psychology, 
have  made  you  too  learned  to  be  wise. 
And  of  course  you  cultivate  knowledge 
for  its  own  sake.     Your  novels  faithfully 
delineate  for  you  all  the  complexities  of 
the  emotion  of  Love  for  instance.    Could 
you  expect  your  young  men  and  women 
to  be  ecstatic  at  springtide,  when  they 
know   that   a  grande  passion    has   its 
scheduled  time  as  certain  as  a  grande 
vitesse?     Or  could  they,  in  sere  autumn 
be  subtilely  linked  in  a  soul-communion, 
in  Maeterlinckian  sweetness  long  drawn 
out, — when    they    know    that    Platonic 
friendships  halt  by  the  way  ?     Who  was 
it    said   that    '  the    nineteenth    century 
dislike  of  realism  is  the  rage  of  Caliban 
seeing  his  own  face  in  a  glass '  ?   Caliban, 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

when  he  sees  his  own  face  in  a  glass, 
proceeds  forthwith  to  destroy  the  mirror. 
And  Narcissus,  when  he  sees  his  own 
image,  destroys  it  by  drowning  himself 
in  the  mere.  Your  art,  whose  function 
is  the  conscious  expression  of  emotion, 

'  Feeds  its  light's  flame  with  self-substantial  fuel, 
Making  a  famine  where  abundance  lies.' 

It  is  quite  clear  that  self-conscious 
expression  defeats  its  purpose,  for  it 
destroys  the  possibility  of  further 
expression,  destroying  as  it  does  the 
possibility  of  further  experience.  And  so 
you  not  only  harm  art,  but  mar  life  as  well." 

"  Art  is  a  katharsis — a  purgation.  By 
giving  expression  to  our  feeling  in  art, 
we  cure  our  turbulent  emotions,  and  so 
make  our  lives  serene." 

"  It  has  been  pointed  out, — and  indeed 
I  believe  it  is  now  generally  held — that 
by  katharsis  the  Greeks  meant  not  so 
much  purgation  as  initiation,  for  the  word 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

katharsis  was  used  by  them  in  connection 
with  initiation  into  certain  religious 
mysteries.  If  art  is  to  calm  the 
turbulence  of  our  emotions,  it  may  do  so 
only  by  initiating  us  into  a  mood  of 
beauty,  by  inducing  within  us  such  a 
disposition  that  we  may  discern  beauty 
where  it  is  present,  and  reject  what  is  not 
beautiful.  Art  is  concerned  with  beauty, 
but  so  is  life,  and  if  serenity  is  a  desirable 
quality  in  life,  it  is  desirable  in  art  as  well. 
So  that  repression,  not  expression,  is  the 
secret  of  art,  as  it  is  the  secret  of  life." 

"  Repression  the  secret  of  art !  Really 
you  are  too  utterly  fanciful/' 

"  Is  not  the  best  life,  as  also  the  best 
art,  selective  ?  You  must  not  forget  that 
scepticism  is  the  better  half  of  eclecticism. 
Repression  means  restraint,  selection  in 
expression,  and  it  is  only  by  following  the 
principle  of  repression  that  we  secure 
coherence  and  continuity  of  expression. 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

In  the  East  we  habitually  repress  our 
emotions,  and  so  we  have  not  exhausted 
our  emotional  capacity.  For  this  reason 
our  art  has  been  self-perpetuating.  You 
are  emotionally  bankrupt,  because  you 
have  always  aimed  at  expression.  You 
have  drawn  too  much  on  your  emotions 
for  your  art.  You  cultivate  emotion  for 
the  sake  of  its  expression — and  so  your 
art  is  self-destructive.  '  Not  the  fruit  of 
experience,  but  experience  itself  is  the 
end,'  says  Pater.  Does  this  mean 
anything  else  than  '  Emotion  for  the 
sake  of  emotion  '  ?  But  remember  that 
emotion  is  e-motion,  a  by-product. 
The  creed  of  Humanism  has  cruelly 
mutilated  mankind,  for  it  has  maimed 
the  emotional  faculty  of  men.  Ever 
since  the  Renaissance  the  West  has 
misunderstood  the  meaning  of  art.  It  was 
about  that  time  that  Europe  became 
self-conscious,  and  self-consciousness  is 
fatal  to  art,  to  thinking,  to  feeling,  and 
to  living." 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  On  the  contrary,  by  self-conscious- 
ness we  double  our  living  by  making  it 
intense." 

"  Living  should  be  not  intense,  but 
intensive,  for  intense  living  kills  life. 
If  you  would  truly  be  artists  in  life,  do 
not  cherish,  but  chasten  your  emotions, 
so  that  they  become  as  rare  as  moods. 
You  are  all  aesthetes  nowadays,  but 
become  Philistines,  like  unto  little 
children,  and  you  shall  enter  again  the 
kingdom  of  art.  Living,  after  all,  is  the  first 
and  best  art,  and  if  your  modern  art  mars 
living,  you  may  be  sure  that  it  is  false  art. 
You  claim  that  your  free  and  expressive 
art  faithfully  mirrors  mankind.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  decorative  and  conventional 
art  that  most  truly  reflects  life." 

11  I  see  you  are  determined  to  be 
startling." 

"  By  your  self-consciousness,  you  have 
turned  art  from  a  mirror  into  a  manual 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

of  life,  and  a  manual  is  generally  a 
mosaic  of  hypocrisies.  Yes,  you  make 
art  serve  the  purpose  of  a  diary,  and 
you  are  too  sophisticated  to  let  the 
writing  in  it  be  nai've.  Since  the  Renais- 
sance, and  its  creed  of  Humanism,  your 
art  has  been  intimate  and  personal. 
You  have  always  demanded  novelty  in 
art,  and  if  art  is  to  be  perpetually 
original  in  this  way,  personality  must 
also  be  bizarre.  Ever  since  you 
became  interested  in  man,  using 
your  art  to  '  paint  man,  man — whatever 
be  the  issue,' — ever  since  then,  where 
your  art  has  at  all  touched  men,  men 
have  ceased  to  be  genuine.  Fortunately 
for  them  your  masses  are  heedless 
about  art,  which  is  the  luxury  of  the  elect 
alone  among  you.  M.  Nordau  has 
conclusively  shown  that  for  the  last  few 
hundred  years,  all  your  great  artists  have 
been  degenerates — bizarre  personalities, 
victims  of  the  mania  for  novelty  in  art. 
One  of  your  leading  brain-specialists 

78 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

remarked  the  other  day  that  he  had 
dissected  the  brains  of  a  lunatic  and  a 
post-impressionist,  and  he  found  that 
exactly  the  same  cells  were  affected  in 
either  case.  Your  eccentrics  seem  to 
divine  by  instinct  that  art  is  their 
destiny.  Their  personalities  are  curious, 
their  visions  strange,  and  so  you 
Humanists  obtain  your  new  types  in 
humanity,  your  new  ideals  in  art.  Has  it 
never  occurred  to  you  that  it  is  inhuman 
to  breed  grotesque  personalities  for 
the  sake  of  art  ?  You  worship  beauty, 
and  you  sacrifice  human  victims  on  your 
altars.  It  is  indeed  fortunate  that  the 
masses  in  Europe  care  naught  for  art, — 
for,  consider  the  probable  result  if  the 
Irish  peasantry  regularly  had  seats  in  the 
Abbey  Theatre  in  Dublin,  and  witnessed 
Mr.  Synge's  plays,  or  if  the  villagers  of 
Wessex  habitually  read  Mr.  Hardy's 
novels  of  an  evening.  They  would  first 
become  aware  that  they  were  pictur- 
esque, and  then  they  would  realize  that 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

picturesqueness  is  a  quality  expected  of 
the  peasantry  by  the  cultured.  The  peas- 
antry would  in  fact,  with  their  sturdy 
common  sense,  turn  to  picturesque- 
ness  for  a  living.  Self-consciously 
bizarre  personalities  among  the  elect  are 
said  to  have  the  '  artistic  temperament ' ; 
the  same  personalities  among  the 
peasantry  would  unhesitatingly,  and  with 
truth,  be  called  criminals.  Dartmoors 
would  soon  multiply  in  Wessex, — 
and  should  the  Irish  peasantry  ever 
become  interested  in  the  art  of  the 
theatre,  I  am  afraid  the  emergency  exits 
from  Ireland  would  be  sought  even 
more  frequently  than  they  are  to-day. 
Such  are  the  dangers  of  expression. 
Your  art,  however,  has  not  always  been 
so  ethical  and  intimate  and  curious. 
Once  on  a  time  it  was  impersonal,  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  when  you  shared  our  secret 
of  repression.  The  art  of  the  East  has 
always  been  anonymous  and  impersonal. 
Your  art  has  been  at  its  best  when  it 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

touched  life  so  closely  that  art  itself  was 
a  mode  of  living,  and  personality  had 
a  representative  aspect.  In  the  East 
personality  always  retains  a  representa- 
tive aspect,  because  the  race-mood,  the 
common  thought  of  the  race  are  clearly 
expressed  in,  and  are  so  easily  accessible 
through  the  convention.  Yes,  conven- 
tional decorative  art  is  more  truly 
expressive,  and  reflects  life  with  better 
effect  than  does  your  expressive  art. 
Your  notion  of  expression  is  too  one- 
sided, too  subjective ;  for  consider, 
the  expressive  quality  of  an  object 
depends  not  on  itself  alone,  but  also  on 
the  receptive  quality  of  the  percipient. 
If  language,  for  instance,  is  to  be 
expressive,  the  speaker  must  be  able 
to  utter  his  thought  in  it,  but  the  listener 
also  must  be  able  to  understand  it. 
Yours  is  a  whimsical  art,  speaking 
always  in  some  new  esperanto.  Your 
artists  always  speak  of  the  public  as  bar- 
barians, but  it  is  your  artists  themselves 
li 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

that  babble  in  strange  tongues. 
They  may  be  inspired,  but  life  is  not 
a  perpetual  Pentecost.  You  have  a 
mystical  conception  of  art  as  a  Tower 
of  Ivory,  but  it  is  only  a  Tower  of  Babel. 
A  conventional  art,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  the  common  artistic  language  of  a 
race.  And  that  is  why  such  art  is 
always  popular,  for  Beauty  does  not 
speak  in  a  speech  so  fantastic  that  the 
pedantic  only  may  take  her  utterance." 

"  Conventional  art  may  be  coherent, 
but  it  is  also  shallow.  Conventions  are 
a  limitation,  hindering  free  utterance, 
and  if  your  art  is  always  understood,  it 
is  only  because  it  keeps  saying  the  same 
thing." 

"  What  matter  if  it  speaks  the  truth  ? 
The  test  of  coherence  is  stability,  while 
the  fickle  is  false." 

"  If  truth  is  coherence,  then  the  true 
is  the  varying,  for  coherence  depends  on 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

conditions,  and  conditions  change  from 
age  to  age.  The  test  of  truth  is  not 
stability,  but  adaptability." 

"  But  you  love  change  for  its  own 
sake.  You  alter  on  speculation,  and 
would  make  the  moment  fit  your  varia- 
tion. Your  art  of  the  present  is  always 
meant  for  the  future,  and  so  it  is  a  per- 
petual anachronism.  You  are  reeds,  but 
reeds  that  would  be  shaken  by  the  wind 
out  of  consideration  for  a  storm  that 
may  never  come." 

"  You  said  that  the  expressiveness  of 
a  thing  depends  on  the  receptive  quality 
of  the  percipient.  Our  art  is  difficult, 
because  it  is  profound ;  but  we  are 
constantly  trying  to  educate  the  public, 
to  intensify  the  receptive  quality  of  the 
percipients,  so  that  art  may  not  be 
meaningless  to  them, — instead  of  making 
our  art  so  superficial  that  the  ignorant 
may  understand  it.  Our  art  embodies 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

our  ideals,  and  so  it  must  always  be 
in  advance  of  the  age.  We  look  on 
art  as  an  escape  from  life." 

"  It  is  corrupt  to  look  on  art  as  an 
escape  from  life.  Only  a  corrupt 
civilization  could  breed  such  a  perverted 
outlook.  You  say  your  art  embodies 
your  ideals.  That  remark  explains  much. 
You  embody  all  your  ideals  in  art,  so 
that  you  can  spare  none  for  life.  Hence, 
I  suppose,  the  materialism  of  the  West. 
Idealism  for  art,  and  materialism  for  life, 
— and  art  is  distinct  from  life.  Did  you 
not  say  that  you  escape  from  life  to  art  ? 
— though  few  there  be  among  you  that 
essay  the  flight.  In  the  East  we  keep 
ideals  for  life.  You  call  us  dreamers. 
But  live  some  of  your  poetry  instead  of 
writing  it,  and  spare  some  meed  of  beauty 
from  your  pictures  for  your  lives.  Yes, 
your  art  is  always  in  advance  of  the  age, 
for  your  artists  are  invariably  telling  this 
generation  the  secrets  of  the  next.  If 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

an  art  is  difficult  of  comprehension,  it 
is  unnatural ;  and  if  it  is  prophetic,  it 
is  portentously  so.  If  beauty  has  any 
message,  it  must  be  so  legible  that  he 
who  runs  may  read,  for  art  is  an  incident 
of  living,  and  beauty  the  accidental 
acquistion  of  use.  Only  the  things  that 
are  needed  for  life  are  the  objects  of  art, 
which  is  simply  the  further  embellishment 
of  these  things  for  the  sake  of  decoration." 


II. 

ON     DECORATING    ART. 


G   2 


II. 

ON    DECORATING   ART. 
UT  what  of  artistic  creation  ?  " 


"  Decoration  is  creation,  or  at  least 
the  only  sort  of  creation  God  has  left  us 
in  this  world,  having  anticipated,  and 
perhaps  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  the 
sort  the  West  has  been  vainly  reattempt- 
ing  these  hundreds  of  years.  Your 
notion  of  artistic  creation  is  as  blasphem- 
ous as  your  notion  of  the  contemplative 
life.  You  are  all  Prometheuses,  and  this  is 
your  original  sin.  Creation  in  art  is  giving 
form  to  substance,  and  form  is  primarily 
dictated  by  utility.  A  vital  work  of  art 
is  one  which  has  form.  In  art,  design  is 
the  animating  principle.  '  Life  belongs  to 
form,  not  to  matter.'  You  try  to  go 
a  step  further,  and  make  substance,  re- 
create matter.  Consequently  you  make 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

so  many  needless,  apish  things —  a  whole 
superfluous  imitation  of  the  original 
creation.  You  reproach  heathens  for 
making  idols  and  worshipping  them, 
but  Western  art  is  a  worship  of  super- 
fluously representative  things — idolatry 
incarnate.  You  should  not  emulate  God, 
not  duplicate  creation,  but  stay  on  earth 
and  beautify.  To  beautify  does  not  mean 
to  make  duplicates  on  a  smaller  scale — 
that  is  re-creating — but  it  means  to 
decorate,  to  embellish.  Art  is  really  the 
decoration  of  art, — ars  decorare  artem — 
for  art  is  concerned  primarily  with  making 
the  things  that  are  necessary  for  life,  and 
these  useful  things  decoration  beautifies. 
The  artist  is  first  artizan,  then  decorator. 
Perfect  art  is  the  perfect  union  of  utility 
and  embellishment.  The  end  of  art  is  to 
create  delight  in  the  daily  exercise  of  our 
normal  faculties, — briefly,  to  make  a  joy 
of  life.  Art  is  not  an  escape  from  life, 
but  an  alleviation  of  living,  a  levamentum 

laboris, — a  recreation.  " 

i 

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On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"I  must  confess  that  we  hold  beauty 
alone  to  be  the  end  of  the  highest  art. 
Considerations  of  utility  must  always 
interfere  with  the  attainment  of  beauty, 
perpetually  turning  one  aside  from  the 
true  goal  of  art. " 

"  I  suppose  you  would  be  surprised  if  I 
tell  you  that,  holding  use  to  be  the  first 
end  of  art,  we  find  beauty  more  often  than 
you  do, — if  indeed,  in  your  conscious 
search  for  it,  you  do  not  miss  it  altogether, 
for  beauty,  like  happiness,  is  not  found  by 
those  who  seek  it.  In  your  conscious  search 
for  beauty,  you  ignore  one  of  the  first 
elements  of  beauty, — form,  that  is  to  say. 
Believing  as  you  do  that  art  is  a  re-creation 
rather  than  a  recreation,  you  have  been  so 
absorbed  in  the  re-creating  of  substance, 
in  the  vain  attempt  to  make  matter,  that 
you  have  in  the  meantime  completely 
forgotten  the  artistic  value  of  form.  " 

"  This  is  the  most  unkindest  cut  of  all. 
I  still  hope  your  criticism  is  unmerited." 
91 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  I  am  afraid  it  is  a  true  criticism. 
The  conception  of  form  is  in  the  first 
instance  derived  from  the  conception  of 
utility, — for  form  is  the  embodiment  of 
purpose.  In  other  words,  it  is  nothing 
but  the  adjustment  of  means  to  ends. 
What  are  the  ideas  of  balance,  proportion, 
symmetry,  rhythm,  but  refinements  on 
this  elementary  idea  of  purpose?  The 
human  form  is  the  visible  embodiment 
of  the  function  of  man ;  it  is  in  fact  an 
explicit  statement  of  man's  place  in  the 
universe,  and  the  shape  of  our  limbs  a 
definition  of  their  functions  as  organs 
of  the  human  body.  Form  then  is 
meaningless  apart  from  utility.  Form  is 
definition  to  a  certain  end.  Beauty  is 
our  sense  of  beauty,  our  feeling  of  fit- 
ness. It  is  our  perception  of  the  nice 
adjustment  of  means  to  ends  in  things 
around  us, — not  a  positive  recognition 
of  utility  as  such,  but  an  awareness  of 
harmony.  Now  in  art  you  ignore  this 
fundamental  idea  of  utility.  You  deny 

92 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  ulterior  end  that  art  is  useful  for, 
saying  that  art  is  its  own  end.  Expression 
is  the  end  of  expression.  As  you  have 
misunderstood  the  idea  of  expression  in 
art,  so  you  have  completely  misunder- 
stood the  idea  of  form.  You  seek  form 
through  expression  ;  we  let  form  reveal 
purpose — art  being  meant  for  use.  As 
we  always  retain  a  sense  of  the  utility 
of  art  we  always  retain  a  sense  of  the 
value  of  form.  It  does  not  need  much 
thought  to  perceive  the  vanity  of  trying 
to  achieve  form  through  expression." 

"All  our  artists  attain  form  through 
expression.  An  artist  in  a  work  of  art 
gives  expression  to  a  particular  emotion. 
That  emotion  creates  its  own  appropriate 
form  in  expression.  The  successful 
work  of  art  is  that  whose  form  adequately 
expresses  the  emotion." 

'  Yes,  you  are  trying  to  create 
substance  nowadays.  You  cultivate 

93 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

emotion  for  the  sake  of  its  expression. 
'  Not  the  fruit  of  experience,  but 
experience  itself  is  the  end.'  You  try 
consciously  to  create  emotion,  the  matter 
of  your  art,  and  let  that  matter  in  turn 
make  its  form.  Hence  your  formless 
works  of  art,  and  your  meaningless 
expressions.  You  tend  nowadays  more 
and  more  to  deny  form.  Consider  the  work 
of  Walt  Whitman — there  is  emotion 
creating  its  own  form — and  Browning,  and 
Wordsworth.  Consider  again  the  '  Blue 
Flower '  romanticism  of  Germany,  which 
produced  a  generation  of  artistic 
monstrosities,  which  you  were  quite 
willing  to  accept  —  for  does  not  each 
emotion  create  its  own  appropriate 
form  ?  Goethe  wrote  of  one  of  these 
monstrosities: — 'The  standpoint  to  which 
philosophy  has  reduced  us  makes  this 
degree  of  tolerance  obligatory.  We  have 
learned  to  value  the  ideal,  even  when  it 
manifests  itself  in  the  strangest  forms.' 
A  strange  form  is  a  monstrosity,  because 

94 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

form  is  essentially  conventional.  The 
most  beautiful  expression  is  that  which 
adheres  closely  to  the  rigid  form,  and 
the  acceptance  of  limitations  alone  con- 
veys a  sense  of  artistic  power.  Consider 
the  sonnet — one  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  poetic  forms,  a  convention  bequeathed 
to  you  by  Mediaeval  Italy.  How  many  of 
your  modern  poets  can  use  the  sonnet- 
form  gracefully  ?  The  sonnet  calls  for 
repression ;  therefore  with  you  sonnet- 
eering is  a  lost  art.  The  whole  of  Amiel's 
Journal  Intime  might  have  been  ex- 
pressed in  a  single  sonnet,  and  had  Amiel 
written  one  sonnet  in  place  of  his 
formless  diary,  his  life  would  probably 
have  been  happier.  However,  he,  too, 
believed  in  expression  for  its  own  sake, 
for  he  lived  for  the  sake  of  his  diary. 
'  Life/  says  one  of  your  critics,  '  is 
terribly  deficient  in  form.'  I  can  under- 
stand the  remark.  If  you  make  expression 
the  end  of  art  and  experience  the  end 
of  life,  and  deprive  both  of  any  ulterior 

95 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

informing  purpose,  your  life  becomes  as 
formless  and  as  void  of  meaning  as  your 
art.  Theory  always  follows  practice. 
As  your  art  had  become  severed  from 
all  idea  of  utility,  you  say  now,  '  Art  is 
useless.'  In  a  few  hundred  years  you 
will  be  propounding  the  maxim,  '  Art  is 
formless.'  The  old-fashioned  among 
you  still  retain  a  sneaking  respect  for 
form.  Form  is  to  you  a  meaningless 
superstition,  which  your  most  enlightened 
and  advanced  minds  have  rid  themselves 
of.  Consider  the  Futurist  school  of 
painting,  which  is  an  outspoken 
recantation  of  form.  You  have  created 
your  matter,  but  you  are  quite  content 
to  leave  it  in  a  chaotic  state." 

"  It  is  hardly  fair  to  judge  our  art  by 
the  extravagances  of  the  Futurist  school." 

"  I    am     only     following     Aristotle's 
principle    that    the    true    nature    of    an 
organism   is    seen    in    its    tendency   or 
96 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

potentiality,  rather  than  in  its  actuality. 
Pre-Raphaelitism  was  once  an  extrava- 
gance, but  it  reached  the  provinces,  and 
became  merely  a  vagary.  With  you 
the  art  of  the  immediate  future  is  an 
extravagance ;  all  the  art  of  the  past 
vagaries  ;  while  the  art  of  the  present  is 
always  the  path  that  leads  to  salvation. 
No  wonder  you  need  so  many  museums 
and  galleries  to  house  your  artistic  waifs 
and  strays.  There  is  only  one  true  way 
in  art — the  chaste  and  narrow  way  of 
convention ;  religion  is  its  strait  gate." 

"  I  am  afraid  you  are  inclined  to  lay 
undue  stress  on  the  relation  between 
religion  and  art." 

"  A  conventional  art  is  unintelligible 
without  religion — for  the  alphabet  of  art 
is  learnt  in  the  school  of  religion." 

"  Such  an  alphabet  must  necessarily 
be  rather  hieroglyphical  in  character. 
Consider  the  hieratic  art  of  Egypt." 

97 


On  the  Truth  oj   Decorative  Art 

"  Hieratic  art  is  the  only  democratic 
art.  It  was  no  doubt  partly  for  this 
reason  that  Plato  in  the  Laws,  expresses 
his  admiration  of  the  stationary  and 
hieratic  character  of  Egyptian  art.  The 
art  of  Egypt  was  understood  by  the 
people  of  Egypt,  whereas  your  art  is 
understood  by  few  beside  the  artists. 
The  elect  among  you  wear  the  orchids 
of  art.  To  the  mass  of  the  natives  of 
England,  art  is  as  meaningless,  as  little 
coveted  by  them,  as  is  the  orchid,  for 
both  are  equally  exotic.  Consider  again 
the  art  of  Greece,  also  a  conventional 
art  inspired  by  religion.  For  this  reason, 
and  because  it  never  lost  sight  of  the 
idea  of  utility,  the  best  Greek  art  was 
always  popular.  It  was  only  late  Greek 
that  was  consciously  expressive.  Alex- 
andria was  Athens  become  self-con- 
scious. Theocritus  only  sings  of  the 
drinking-cup — '  a  deep  bowl  of  ivy- 
wood,  rubbed  with  sweet  bee's  wax,  a 
two-eared  bowl  newly-wrought,  smacking 
98 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

still  of  the  knife  of  the  graver.  Round 
its  upper  edges  goes  the  ivy  winding,  ivy 
besprent  with  golden  flowers ;  and  about 
it  is  a  tendril  twisted  that  joys  in  its 
saffron  fruit  .  .  .  .'  Such  bowls  were 
sung  at  self-conscious  Alexandria,  but 
they  were  made  and  used  in  naive 
Hellas.  While  Longinus  at  Alexandria 
analysed  the  sublime,  Thyrsis  attained 
it  in  Sicily.  Yes,  Alexandria  set  the 
modern  fashions  of  the  self-centred 
university,  of  the  museum,  the  picture 
gallery,  and  the  concert  room.  At 
Alexandria  man  first  became  offensively 
personal.  But  let  us  return  to  Athens 
where  philosophers  discoursed  in 
Academe,  among  the  plane-trees,  still 
happily  unconscious  that  Academe  was 
an  academy.  Here  art  was  impersonal. 
Artists  did  not  '  create '  to  express 
themselves,  but  produced  the  things 
necessary  for  the  observances  of  religion 
and  the  needs  of  daily  life.  Becoming 
familiar  in  the  service  of  religion  with 

99 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  sublimest  conceptions  of  their  race, 
they  used  these  conceptions  as  motives 
for  the  decoration  of  the  useful  things 
of  life.  The  first  conventions  of  the 
arts  were  learnt  in  the  service  of  religion. 
Remember  that  the  Greek  drama  was, 
from  first  to  last,  only  the  decoration  of 
a  religious  festival ;  that  the  theatre  of 
the  Greeks  was  vested  with  the  same 
privileges  of  sanctuary  as  their  temples  ; 
that  their  dramatists  and  actors  were, 
for  the  time  being,  priests  with  the 
privileges  of  the  priesthood,  the  master 
of  the  ceremonies  at  this  religious 
ceremonial  being  the  priest  of  Dionysos. 
Was  not  the  drama  of  the  Greeks  then 
a  hieratic  art,  and  popular  for  that 
very  reason  ?  The  Greek  drama  was 
essentially  a  conventional  art,  and  its 
conventions — the  limitation  of  the 
number  of  actors  to  three,  the 
significant  conventions  of  the  mask 
and  the  buskin,  and  of  the  chorus, 
for  example,  were  in  the  first  instance 


100 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

prescribed     by    the     priesthood.      The 
idea  of  form,  the  principles  of  unity  and 
balance  which  characterized  all  the  art 
of  the  Greeks,  were  in  the  first  instance 
derived  from  the  drama,  whose  form  was 
dictated   purely   by    utility,    the    drama 
being    consecrated    to    the    service    of 
religion.     The  form    of  the  drama  was 
embodied  and  exemplified  again  in  their 
architecture,    their    sculpture,    in    their 
mural  decoration  and  in  their  vase-paint- 
ing.    Is  not  the  alphabet  of  art  learnt  in 
the  school  of  religion  ?  And  whence  did 
the  Greeks  derive  the  motives    for   the 
decoration  of  the  things  of  daily  use  if  not 
from    religion  ?     Herodotus    tells   us   of 
numerous  bowls  and    tripods,    gifts    to 
shrines  and  oracles.     The  decoration  of 
these  depicted  scenes  from  their  myth- 
ology,   and     the    same    motives    were 
repeated  in  the  embellishment  of  their 
vases,  the  ordinary  vessels  found  in  every 
household.    The   symbols,   the    conven- 
tional patterns  of  the  decorative  art  of 

101  H 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  East  are  in  the  same  way  derived 
from  religion.  We  read  in  the  Ramayana 
that  the  craftsmen  who  wrought  the 
utensils  for  a  religious  sacrifice  were 
given  the  same  privileges  as  the 
officiating  priests,  who  here  again  origin- 
ated the  first  conventions  of  the  arts. 
Yes,  art  is  meaningless  without  conven- 
tions, and  conventions  are  unintelligible 
without  religion,  or  some  other  national 
sentiment  equally  universal.  You  say 
the  convention  hinders  free  expression. 
Rational  expression,  as  I  pointed  out, 
demands  intelligence  on  the  part  of  the 
listener,  as  well  as  reason  on  the  part  of 
the  hearer.  A  common  sentiment  like 
that  of  religion  creates  such  an  affinity 
between  artist  and  public  that  the  former 
may  merely  hint  and  suggest  his  meaning 
and  be  understood.  Nowadays  your 
artist  needs  many  friendly  '  critics  '  while 
he  is  living,  and  many  well-intentioned 
biographers  after  he  is  dead,  to  explain 
'The  Man  and  his  Message/  and  still 


102 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  public  is  bewildered.      In  the  East 
the    man    is    ignored.      The    personal 
message    is    the     evil     communication 
that    corrupts    good    manners    in    art. 
In   the    East    we   are   so   old-fashioned 
that  we  will  not  accept  these  incoherent 
telegrams  of  art,  though  we  understand 
and  accept  the  traditional  symbol.    You 
will     remember     the     Greek     epigram 
commemorating      a      wall-painting     by 
Polygnotus.     The    art    of    painting    at 
this  time  was  limited  as   a   medium   of 
expression,  it  was  what  you  would  call 
'  crude ' ;  and   yet   it  was    said    of    the 
Polyxena    in    this    painting    '  that    the 
whole  of  the  Trojan  war  could  be  read 
in  her  eyes.'     The  mythology  of  Homer 
was  then  a  living  tradition.  The  epigram 
vindicates  the  crude  style  in  painting  for 
all  time  so  long  as  there  is  a  crude  faith  ; 
and  Polygnotus  was  a  crude  painter  not 
because  he  was  post-Impressionist,  but 
because   he   was    post-Homeric.     Now- 
adays you  affect  crudeness  because  it  is 

103  H  2 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

convincing,  and  cultivate  naivete  for  its 
charm.  But  is  not  self-conscious  naivete 
an  absurdity  ? 

You  have  abandoned  traditions  in  life, 
and  conventions  in  art — and  I  believe 
you  are  yourselves  conscious  of  your 
loss.  Consider  the  recent  attempts  to 
revivify  and  utilize  the  conventions  of 
those  early  days  when  art  was  wedded 
to  life.  The  fruit  of  these  vain  attempts 
you  see  in  pre-Raphaelitism  and  its 
feigned  naivete,  in  pseudo-Catholicism, 
in  an  irreligious  religiosity,  a  decadent 
primitiveness,  a  designed  impressionism, 
a  representative  or  pictorial  symbolism — 
which  are  all  contradictions  in  terms. 
Too  late  you  have  recognised  the  value 
of  conventions,  and  when  you  have 
completely  lost  the  sense  of  form,  you 
will  realize  also  the  artistic  value  of  form. 
It  would  appear  that  some  among  you  are 
already  troubled  by  a  consciousness  that 
all  is  not  well  with  art  when  it  is  divorced 
from  utility,  and  would  wed  them  anew. 

104 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Only,  as  in  your  modern  weddings,  there 
seems  to  be  some  uncertainty  as  to  which 
is  to  obey.  Lately  you  have  started  '  Arts 
and  Crafts  Societies '  and  '  Schools  of 
Design,'  which  only  reveal  your  com- 
plete inability  to  make  beautiful  things 
of  use.  You  are  so  perverted  that 
you  have  succeeded  in  distorting  that 
elementary  idea  of  utility  so  that  it  is 
incomprehensible  to  the  many,  and  made 
of  that  vital  artistic  creed  merely  a 
pretty  artistic  heresy.  For  centuries 
you  had  forgotten  that  decoration  is  the 
end  of  art.  Now  you  present  that  early 
view  of  a  decorative  art  in  a  form  that 
is  as  self-contradictory  as  your  other 
perversions." 

"  You  credit  us  with  a  marvellous 
ingenuity  in  perversion." 

"  Your  ingenuity  has  not  been  very 
subtle  in  this  case,  though  characteristic. 
You  have  merely  turned  decorative  artt 
into  artistic  decoration" 

105 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  If  the  one  is  reasonable,  I  fail  to  see 
how  the  other  is  absurd.  You  are  now 
juggling  with  terms." 

"  Think  of  the  latest  development  in 
your  art  of  painting — the  School  of 
Mural  Decoration.  Perhaps  you  have 
read  the  literature  of  the  movement.  I 
forget  whether  the  movement  has  its 
official  organ  or  not,  and  its  head  and 
branch  offices,  without  which  apparently 
no  modern  guild  is  complete.  Anyhow 
this  school  has  rediscovered  decoration. 
Its  members  are  willing  to  decorate  any 
given  blank  wall — purely  for  love  of  the 
thing — and  if  the  decoration  is  not 
successful,  they  are  willing  to  efface  it. 
Decoration,  mark  you,  is  the  end — 
decoration  for  its  own  sake.  As  for 
walls — why,  they  are  simply  crying  to  be 
decorated.  Here  is  a  theory  of  utility 
for  art's  sake — a  sufficiently  compre- 
hensive perversion.  Unfortunately,  the 
psychology  of  the  movement  is  not 

1 06 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

original.  The  School  of  Pavement- 
Artists  has  for  a  number  of  years  been 
tentatively  decorating  chance  spaces  of 
pavement,  just  as  the  School  of  Mural 
Decorators  now  proposes  to  decorate 
fortuitous  expanses  of  wall.  But  why 
stop  at  mural  decoration  ?  A  school  of 
artistic  wood-gravers  might  be  started 
for  the  purpose  of  embellishing  suitable 
wooden  surfaces.  You  might  send  your 
useful  chairs,  tables,  chests  and  other 
articles  to  be  adorned  in  this  way,  and 
they  would  return  completely  beautified. 
So  would  all  useful  things  be  rendered 
beautiful  by  these  artistic  decorators. 
But  the  end  of  decorative  art  is  to  make 
beautiful  things  of  use, — to  make  a 
beautiful  building,  decorate  its  walls  if 
necessary,  but  first  to  make  the  building 
itself  beautiful  in  form — not  merely  to 
decorate  the  walls  of  any  formless 
building.  Pseudo-craftsmanship  is  the 
latest  development  of  your  art,  merely 
because  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  artist 

107 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

was  the  craftsman.  Your  modern  mural 
decorator,  because  he  is  a  modern  artist, 
will  merely  turn  the  wall  into  a  medium 
of  expression.  I  have  a  friend,  an  artist 
and  a  mural  decorator,  who  has  succeeded 
in  making  his  studio  in  Chelsea  express 
what,  I  hope,  is  only  a  passing  phase  of 
his  personality.  He  believes  he  is  a 
martyr,  a  martyr  to  art,  and  to  express 
his  sense  of  martyrdom,  he  has  made  use 
of  an  eclectic  and  somewhat  mystical 
style  of  mural  decoration  of  one  of  the 
very  early  centuries  A.D.  His  studio  is 
in  fact  a  most  realistic  reproduction  of  a 
catacomb — faithful  to  the  last  bird,  beast, 
and  little  fish  on  the  walls." 

"  Well  his  symbolism  at  any  rate  is 
appropriate." 

"  Yes  the  catacomb  is  a  fairly  success- 
ful symbol.  The  tradition  of  Christianity 
makes  it  intelligible  as  a  symbol  of 
persecution.  My  friend  was  wise  in  thus 

108 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

using  a  conventional  symbolism,  instead 
of  trying  to  make  his  own  symbolism  to 
express  persecution  or  any  other  idea, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  Futurists.  It  seems 
to  me  that  as  a  rule  the  West  nowadays 
does  not  understand  the  true  essence  of 
the  symbol,  which  lies  in  association 
rather  than  in  representation.  The 
connection  of  the  symbol  with  the  thing 
symbolized  is  a  matter  not  of  sight  but  of 
faith — not  a  matter  of  present  imitation, 
but  of  old  association.  Hence  all  good 
symbols  are  conventions,  and  conventions 
are  intelligible  only  in  the  light  of  living 
traditions.  A  convention  is  not  a  dead 
thing.  The  connection  of  a  symbol  with 
its  object  is  not  to  be  discovered  in  art, 
or  manufactured  artificially  by  art,  but  it 
is  to  be  found  and  expressed  in  life,  in 
actual  living.  Take  for  instance  the 
symbolism  of  the  Catholic  Church,  used 
to  such  good  effect  in  your  pre-Renaiss- 
ance  art.  Had  the  form  of  life,  the  ideals 
of  the  Middle  Ages  remained  stationary, 

109 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

these  conventions  would  have  lived 
longer,  as  similar  conventions  have  lived 
in  the  East.  But  with  the  Renaissance 
the  passion  for  personal  expression 
sprang  up,  and  swept  away  all  traditions 
and  conventions.  Conventions  are 
necessary  in  art.  Nowadays  each 
successive  school  of  artists  tries  to 
create  its  own  conventions,  to  make  its 
own  mannerisms  conventional — a  vain 
attempt.  The  absurdity  of  such  efforts 
may  be  seen  in  that  recent  abortive 
symbolist  movement  in  literature. 
Because  the  first  symbols,  those  of 
language,  were  arbitrary,  but  only  in  the 
sense  that  we  cannot  now  trace  any 
inherent  resemblance  between  them  and 
their  objects,  past  usage  alone  making 
present  use  possible,  these  modern 
symbolists  fancy  that  all  symbols  are 
arbitrary.  They  try  to  make  new  symbols, 
but  in  characteristic  fashion  they  set  to 
work  the  wrong  way,  first  choosing  their 
symbols,  supposedly  on  representative 

no 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

grounds,  but  the  connections  are  so 
strained  and  capricious  that  the  symbols 
are  unintelligible.  Most  of  your  modern 
art  is  therefore  written  in  cipher,  incom- 
prehensible without  an  appended  code, 
which  you  fail  to  supply  none  the  less. 
Mr.  Arthur  Symons  says,  '  What  distin- 
guishes the  symbolism  of  our  day  from 
the  symbolism  of  the  past  is  that  it  has 
now  grown  conscious  of  itself.'  This 
self-consciousness  is  the  first  error  in 
your  modern  symbolism.  The  moment 
you  become  self-conscious  you  go 
on  to  attempt  the  impossible  task  of 
re-creation.  Whereas  true  symbols  have 
grown  spontaneously  and  unconsciously, 
you  now  try  to  manufacture  them 
artificially,  as  a  further  aid  to  self- 
expression.  Rimbaud's  sonnet  of  the 
vowels  does  in  a  way  tell  the  truth  about 
all  your  modern  symbolism  : 

'  A  noir,  E  blanc,  I  rouge,  U  vert,  O  bleu,  voyelles 
Je  dirai  quelque  jour  vos  naissances  latentes, 
A,  noir  corset  velu  des  mouches  eclatantes 
Qui  bombillent  autour  des  puanteurs  cruelles, 


in 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Golfe  d'ombre  ; 


U,  cycles,  vibrements  divins  des  mers  virides, 
Paix  des  pfitis  semes  d'animaux,  paix  des  rides 
Que  1'alchimie  imprime  aux  grands  fronts  studieux  ; 


Without  some  such  key,  the  sound-mosaics 
of  symbolist  poets  are  as  meaningless 
as  are  the  colour-orchestrations  of 
Futurist  painters.  The  symbolist  move- 
ment; in  literature  is  in  fact  the  cult  of 
language  for  its  own  sake,  for  you 
make  language  useless  as  a  medium  of 
expression,  quite  inexpressive,  when, 
because  words  have  significance  you  try 
to  give  significance  to  sounds,  and  because 
the  composite  word  has  meaning,  to  give 
meaning  to  the  syllables  which  compose  it. 
Language  is  the  channel  of  thought,  but 
too  much  meaning  makes  of  language  an 
incontinent  river.  Here  symbolism,  like 
futurism  in  painting,  ignoring  utility,  is  the 
complete  negation  of  form.  It  is  curious 

112 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

that  ever  since  you  made  conscious 
expression  the  end  of  art,  owing  to  this 
fundamental  fallacy  in  your  art-theory, 
your  art  in  general  defeats  its  purpose, 
and  every  new  impulse  in  your  art  veers 
round  to  its  opposite." 

"  In  Eastern  art  apparently  there  are 
no  new  impulses  of  any  kind.  A 
useful,  purely  decorative  art  is  the 
product  of  mankind  in  its  infancy. 
Primitive  peoples  alone  do  not  rise 
beyond  a  decorative  art ;  and  as  for  the 
symbolism  of  the  Middle  Ages,  we  have 
outgrown  the  ideals  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Humanity  has  progressed  since  then." 

"  Humanity  in  Europe  has  simply 
grown  aged.  In  the  ancient  East  we 
still  do  not  seek  expression  in  art.  Our 
art  is  still  decorative  and  symbolical.  It 
may  be  that  repression  is  the  secret  of 
perpetual  youth  in  the  life  and  art  of  a 
people.  Conventional  symbolism  keeps 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

art  for  ever  young.     The  realism  of  your 
art  has  left  no  place  for  symbolism." 

"  Greek  art,  before  it  attained  its 
perfection,  had  abandoned  the  Oriental 
style  of  symbolism,  which  hinders  the 
progress  of  art,  forcing  it  into  monotonous 
repetition,  always  giving  to  art  moreover 
a  monstrous  and  bizarre  character 
contrary  to  reason.  You  still  represent 
your  gods  crudely  with  six  heads  and  a 
dozen  arms.  But  the  Greeks  would  not 
tolerate  the  grotesque — '  to  the  Greek, 
pure  artist,  that  work  is  most  instinct 
with  spiritual  life  which  conforms  most 
closely  to  the  perfect  facts  of  physical 
life.'  The  Pheidian  Zeus  was  the  Greek 
ideal,  not  some  monstrous  half-human 
divinity." 

"  You  would  make  your  gods  in  the 
likeness  of  men.  God  made  man  in  His 
image  and  likeness,  it  is  true,  but  you 
seem  to  think  that  God  made  only  man. 

114 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Which  is  the  more  reasonable,  the 
Oriental  who  refers  back  to  the  Creator 
all  the  attributes  of  all  His  creatures, 
man  and  beast  alike,  since  that  may  not 
be  in  the  creature  which  was  not  in  the 
Creator,  or  the  Greek  who  seeks  to 
define  the  divine  attributes  into  human 
form — and  which  embodies  the  more 
sublime  conception,  a  monstrous  or  a 
humanly  realistic  image  ?  Remember 
that  at  the  present  day  it  is  uncertain 
whether  many  Greek  statues  repre- 
sent gods  or  athletes.  If  the  Greeks 
had  been  quite  modern,  and  had 
the  modern  taste  for  financial  economy 
in  matters  artistic,  they  would  perhaps 
have  made  the  same  statues  represent 
gods  on  the  Sabbath,  and  football-players 
on  Saturday  afternoons.  The  Greeks 
derived  their  later  conceptions  of  the  gods 
from  Homer.  That  these  conceptions 
were  not  in  any  way  sublime  is 
sufficiently  attested  to  by  Plato,  who 
realized  that  the  gods  as  depicted  by 

«5 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Homer  are  only  too  human.  That  Plato 
would  not  tolerate  poets  and  artists  in 
his  Republic  is  quite  intelligible  when  we 
remember  that  he  was  familiar  with  the 
lusty  divinities  of  Homer,  and  had  seen 
the  robust  Apollos  of  the  contemporary 
sculptors.  That  futile  and  truceless 
controversy  among  you  between  the 
artist  and  the  moralist,  first  opened  by 
Plato,  need  never  have  arisen  if  Greek 
art  had  always  been  as  symbolical  as  at 
the  first,  without  degenerating  into 
realism.  In  the  East,  morality  has  no 
quarrel  with  art.  The  Oriental  is  the 
complete  Platonist,  and  the  principles  of 
Plato's  philosophy  are  reflected  in 
Oriental  art.  Plato  said  that  the  painter's 
representations  of  objects  are  thrice 
removed  from  the  truth.  The  Oriental 
would  certainly  agree  with  this  criticism, 
for  the  Eastern  artist  never  tries  to 
reproduce  the  external  forms  of  nature,  but 
rather  to  represent  the  Ideas  which  they 
embody.  Remember  that  to  the  Oriental, 

116 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

who  believes  in  metempsychosis,  the  doc- 
trine of  reminiscence  is  something  more 
than  a  picturesque  allegory.  The  Eastern 
artist  in  fact  goes  back  to  the  realm  of 
original  Ideas ;  before  he  makes  an  image 
he  retires  into  solitude  and  meditation. 
The  genius  is,  without  metaphor,  the  seer 
of  visions.  In  this  way  it  was  that  the 
first  images  of  the  gods  were  made  by 
Orientals — literally  they  were  the  em- 
bodiments of  mystic  visions.  The  image 
of  the  god  once  visualized  is  thereafter 
made  conventional,  the  symbolism 
prescribed  by  canons.  The  wealth  of 
symbolism  in  Oriental  art  was  derived  in 
this  way  as  much  as  the  symbolism  of 
the  Catholic  Church  is  drawn  from  the 
visions  of  mystics — only  the  Catholic 
mystic  was,  as  a  rule,  poet  rather  than 
sculptor  or  painter.  Yes,  the  symbolism 
of  art  is  always  learnt  from  religion.  I 
do  not  suggest  that  art  is  for  ever  to  be 
the  handmaid  of  religion — both  religion 
and  art  are  equally  incidental  and 

117  I 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

accessory  to  living — but  to  art  religion 
stands  in  the  place  of  a  necessary, 
anterior  circumstance.  The  religion  of 
a  people  reveals  that  people's  outlook 
on  life.  A  religion  is  an  attempt  at 
interpreting  the  universe,  and  symbols 
suggest  the  connections  we  have 
discovered.  Art  is  initially  dedicated  to 
the  service  of  religion,  and  in  return  for 
this  first  service  religion  bestows  on  art 
the  gift  of  symbols,  which  is  the  gift  of 
tongues." 

UA  religion  is  one  of  the  earliest 
attempts  at  interpreting  the  universe — 
symbolism  a  language  adequate  only  to 
the  expression  of  that  first  interpretation. 
Symbolism  in  time  becomes  a  dead 
language,  for  with  time  we  modify  our 
earlier  conceptions.  Nothing  is  so 
mutable  as  truth." 

"  Our  conceptions  of  life,  that  is  to  say, 
the  necessities  of  our  life  vary.  But  as 

118 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

a  religion  acquires  new  dogmas  in 
accordance  with  varying  conceptions, 
so  art  gradually  acquires  new  symbols." 

"  But  why  should  we  leave  art  always 
in  bondage  to  religion  ?  And  why  need 
art  always  speak  in  symbols,  instead  of 
expressing  the  truth  clearly  and 
directly?" 

"  Because  nothing  is  so  mutable  as 
truth.  Art  expresses  our  apprehension 
of  truth,  art  is  a  manner  of  seeing. 
Seeing  after  all  is  relative  to  its  organ, 
and  as  for  the  organ  of  sight,  its 
efficiency  varies  with  the  need  of  the 
moment.  In  short  our  vision  is  never 
reliable.  We  never  apprehend  the  truth. 
The  symbol  by  its  very  inadequacy 
reminds  us  always  of  the  incompleteness, 
of  the  subjectivity  of  our  seeing.  It  is 
the  symbol  alone  that  saves  us  from  the 
convention  of  matter  in  art.  The  Eastern 
artist  knows  that  the  world  is  a  fleeting 

119  1 2 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

illusion.  For  that  reason  Eastern  art 
is  not  a  permanent  delusion.  Your  art 
is  always  false,  abounding  as  it  does  in 
material  conventions." 

"  Then  is  a  comprehensive  scepticism 
the  last  secret  of  art  ?  " 

"  Scepticism  is  the  intellectual  privilege 
of  the  believer, — and  a  comprehensive 
scepticism  may  only  proceed  from  an  all- 
embracing  faith.  The  order  of  the 
universe  is  the  balance  of  opposites, 
and  Providence  is  the  rendering  of 
compensations.  If  you  would  disbelieve 
in  everything  you  must  believe  in  every- 
thing. If  you  would  doubt  phenomena 
you  must  believe  in  Ideas.  You  may 
hold  that  the  world  is  an  illusion,  but 
you  must  then  hold  that  the  world  is 
a  symbol.  The  materialist  may  not  be  a 
symbolist.  Art  may  not  be  realistic  and 
symbolical  at  the  same  time.  There  is 
a  certain  mediatory  quality  which  is  of 


1 20 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

the  essence  of  the  symbol.  Western 
art  may  not  use  symbols  because  Western 
civilization  has  been  a  universal  process 
of  mistaking  means  for  ends.  I  believe 
you  give  the  process  the  name  of 
specialization.  Art  is  an  end ;  thought 
is  an  end ;  education,  emotion,  experience, 
all  these  are  ends ;  democracy  itself  which 
is  nothing  but  a  means  is  also  an  end 
with  you.  We  can  only  use  that  as  a 
symbol  which  we  are  sufficiently  aloof 
from,  sufficiently  master  of,  to  look  upon 
it  as  a  means.  You  cannot  regard  the 
world  as  a  symbol  because  you  are 
materialists.  Your  art  is  the  expression 
of  emotion.  Hence  you  may  not  make 
a  symbol  of  an  emotion,  but  only  represent 
it." 


"  Yes,  because  art  is  impersonal.  The 
representation   of  an  emotion  is  always 


121 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

a  personal  representation.  An  impersonal 
art  has  a  higher  degree  of  excellence 
than  a  personal  art  for  the  same  reason 
that  made  Aristotle  say  that  poetry  is  a 
more  universal  and  truer  thing  than 
history.  Your  art  in  fact  is  a  series  of 
petty,  personal  histories.  The  symbol, 
being  a  race-product,  and  adequate  only 
to  the  expression  of  race-moods  pre- 
vents the  artist  from  personal  expression 
which  is  fatal  to  art  and  also  to  life.  The 
symbol  which  is  an  abstract  convention 
makes  art  always  preserve  its  universal 
character, — and  so  art  reacts  on  life  in  this 
way,  that  we  in  turn  become  selfless  and 
see  in  our  lives  only  the  working  of 
universal  laws,  [t  is  only  in  this  way 
that  we  attain  serenity  in  life.  It  is  thus 
that  art  initiates  us  into  a  mood  of 
beauty,  and  calms  the  turbulence  of  our 
emotions.  Consider  the  conventional 
image  of  the  Buddha.  To  the  serenity 
expressed  in  that  symbol  is  probably  due 
the  serenity  of  Eastern  life.  Symbolism  in 

122 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

art  has  this  further  merit,  that  it  offers 
the  only  solution  to  the  feud  between 
artist  and  moralist.  Plato  was  quick  to 
detect  the  fallacy  of  the  theory  that  the 
representation  of  emotion  cures  emotion. 
Consider  what  he  says  in  the  Republic  :  — 
4  And  with  regard  to  sexual  desires, 
and  anger,  and  all  feelings  of  desire 
and  pain  and  pleasure  which  we  say 
follow  all  our  actions,  you  observe  that 
poetic  imitation  produces  all  these  effects 
in  us.  They  should  be  withered,  and  it 
waters  them  and  makes  them  grow.  It 
makes  them  rule  over  us,  when  they 
ought  to  be  subjects  if  we  are  to  become 
better  and  happier,  instead  of  worse  and 
more  miserable.'  Your  modern  novel 
can  hardly  touch  matters  of  sex  without 
becoming  realistically  pornographic.  In 
the  East  sex  is  used  always  only  as  a 
symbol.  The  Eastern  moralist  has  never 
had  occasion  to  protest  against  the 
corrupting  influences  of  literature  or 
art." 

123 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

"  I  admit  that  there  are  still  some 
Puritans  among  us  who  seek  to  limit  our 
art,  but  happily  Puritanism  is  no  longer 
fashionable." 

"  Long  centuries  ago  the  English 
people  had  a  genuine  character  of 
their  own.  Perhaps  the  Tudor  period 
represents  the  English  national  temper  at 
its  best.  But  just  then  you  were  carried 
away  by  the  Renaissance  movement,  and 
in  reaction  you  let  yourselves  be  bullied 
into  Puritanism,  and  now  you  are  letting 
yourselves  be  bullied  out  of  Puritanism 
into  pure  vulgarity.  Even  a  genuine 
Puritanical  taste  is  preferable  to  an  utter 
want  of  taste,  and  good  broad-cloth  is 
better  than  bad  brocade.  Between 
Puritanism  and  vulgarity  you  have  lost 
sight  of  your  national  character  and  your 
traditions.  You  need  mightily  to  be 
converted  and  '  find  yourselves.'  In  the 
Tudor  times  when  you  were  true  to  your- 
selves, your  art  was  more  nearly  joined 

124 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

to  life  than  it  has  ever  been  since.  Your 
art  then  was  decorative,  and  life  had 
really  the  quality  of  a  pageant.  Taine 
remarks  of  life  in  Europe  at  the  time  : 
'  This  is  why  at  this  period  they  did 
make  a  holiday  of  it,  so  like  a  picture 
that  it  fostered  painting  in  Italy,  so  like 
a  piece  of  acting  that  it  produced  the 
drama  in  England.'  The  drama  in 
England  does  not  mean  Shakespeare, 
for  Shakespeare  really  represents  a 
departure  from  the  genuine  English 
tradition  of  the  drama  as  a  decorative 
art.  With  Shakespeare  the  English 
drama  became  consciously  expres- 
sive. The  earlier  English  drama  was 
only  an  added  decoration  to  life,  the 
embellishment  of  an  occasion.  That 
earlier  tradition  we  see  represented  in 
the  exquisitely  decorative  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  for  it  was  a  masque, 
made  for  the  adornment  of  some  occasion 
in  life.  It  was  a  beautiful  thing  meant 
for  use.  Such  has  the  drama  always 

125  i  3 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

remained  in  the  East,  a  joyous  thing 
meant  only  for  decorating  life  and 
making  life  joyous.  The  self-conscious, 
introspective  and  moralising  Hamlet  is 
a  typical  Renaissance  product.  It  is 
ethical,  and  *  human  '  and  consciously 
expressive.  It  was  written  for  the 
theatre,  written  by  Shakespeare  to 
express  Shakespeare.  When  the  Globe 
Theatre  was  built  in  London,  English 
drama  was  in  its  decline,  for  it  had 
become  conscious  of  itself.  And  the 
quality  of  English  life  too  began  to 
deteriorate.  You  seek  now  to  restore 
to  life  something  of  the  quality  of  a 
masquerade,  but  you  should  not  in  the 
first  place  have  let  the  theatre  absorb 
the  masque.  Shakespeare  had  a  supreme 
sense  of  irony  when  he  said  that  the 
world  is  a  stage  after  he  had  done  his 
best  to  deprive  life  of  its  spectacular 
element.  When  the  stage  was  removed 
from  the  world  to  the  theatre,  life  was 
made  the  poorer — it  lost  the  quality  of  a 

126 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

show.     The   specializing   of  art    is    the 
disintegrating  of  life." 

"  But  has  not  art  gained,  and  has  not 
life  shared  in  the  gain  ?  Hamlet  is  an 
acquisition  to  life  as  to  art.  As  you  say, 
only  an  expressive  art  could  have  created 
Hamlet,  and  in  this  case  the  artist  seems 
to  have  succeeded  very  well  without 
symbolism." 

"  Specialization  is  a  loss  to  art  itself. 
The  acceptance  of  a  theory  of  conscious 
expression  is  the  beginning  of  art's 
quarrel  with  itself,  for  you  soon  come  to 
the  problem  of  the  ugly  in  art.  Your 
artist  is  given  full  licence  to  express 
himself ;  then  if  his  feelings  are  painful 
or  morbid,  or  if  he  sees  only  the  ugly 
aspects  of  life,  he  is  free  to  represent  the 
morbid  and  the  ugly  in  art.  The  repre- 
sentation of  undesirable  things  in  art 
gives  these  undesirable  things  a  fresh 
tenure  in  life.  Every  young  man  is  a 

127 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Hamlet  nowadays  as  soon  as  he  has 
attained  years  of  discretion.  The  worm 
of  introspection  has  definitely  taken  up 
its  abode  in  life's  rose-garden.  Plato- 
was  distressed  to  think  of  '  the  best  of  us 
listening  to  Homer  or  any  other  of  the 
tragic  poets,  when  he  is  imitating  a 
hero  in  grief,  and  spinning  out  a  long 
melancholy  lamentation,  or  imitating 
men  singing  and  disfiguring  themselves 
in  grief.'  When  we  see  these  things  done 
in  art,  we  go  and  do  likewise  in  life  ;  and 
these  things  are  ugly  in  life.  Here  too 
you  see  the  loss  to  art  when  you  deserted 
symbolism.  Representation  renders  selec- 
tion in  art  unnecessary.  The  imitative 
instinct  embraces  everything.  When  you 
make  the  artist's  craving  for  self- 
expression  the  basis  of  art,  rather  than  the 
beautifying  of  life,  you  give  ugliness  a 
sanction  in  art,  and  evil  a  sanction  in  life. 
Conscious  expression  has  no  place  in 
art.  When  decoration  is  the  end 
of  art,  the  artist's  opportunities  for 

128 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

self-expression  are  limited,  and  the  ugly 
is  rigorously  excluded  from  the  province 
of  art.  And  so  we  gradually  eliminate 
the  ugly  elements  from  life.  Now, 
since  your  artists  do  represent  the  ugly 
in  art,  you  are  forced  into  the  exaltation 
of  ugliness.  The  ugly  elements  increase 
and  multiply  in  life,  and  your  art  instead 
of  making  life  beautiful,  makes  life 
hideous.  In  the  East  life  remains 
beautiful  because  art  is  decorative.  The 
morris  dance,  once,  like  the  masque, 
common  in  England,  belonged  to  the 
time  when  art  in  England  was  decorative. 
In  the  East  we  still  have  our  decorative 
dances,  we  can  still  contrive  a  gorgeous 
pageant  for  a  feast-day,  and  when  we 
are  joyous  we  crown  our  brows  with 
garlands." 

"  Oh,  the  prettinesses  of  unsophisti- 
cated peoples ! " 

"  Do   not    sneer    at    unsophisticated 
prettiness.      Unsophisticated    prettiness 
129 


On  the    Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

comes  very  near  the  sublime — it  is  as 
near  the  sublime  as  we  can  ever  attain 
to.  The  prettinesses  of  the  East  are  the 
formal  conventions  of  living.  They  do 
not  proceed  from  a  sophisticated  cult  of 
prettiness  for  its  own  sake.  The  decorative 
art  of  the  East  is  so  closely  wedded  to 
life  that  it  makes  life  beautiful,  it  moulds 
life  after  its  pattern.  Decorative  art 
inasmuch  as  it  is  useful,  is  necessary  to 
all,  and  inasmuch  as  it  is  conventional  it 
is  understood  by  all.  The  formal  conven- 
tions of  art  are  repeated  in  the  formal 
conventions  of  life,  for  their  symbolism 
is  identical.  Consider  the  decorative 
dancing  of  the  East.  Here  the  fleeting 
gestures  and  attitudes  are  derived  from 
the  symbolical  poses  of  the  gods  in  the 
sculptor's  art,  and  because  dancing  is 
graceful  and  dancing  is  common,  rhythm 
and  grace  are  not  lacking  in  the  motions 
and  postures  of  daily  life.  The  flowers  in 
the  garlands  worn  on  festal  occasions  are 
chosen  for  the  same  symbolism  which 

130 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

directs  their  choice  in  the  decorative  art 
of  the  carver  in  precious  metals.  The 
weaver  in  making  his  carpets  uses  as 
his  patterns  the  geometrical  symbols 
first  designed  by  mystics,  and  used 
afterwards  in  decorating  the  walls  of 
temples  ;  and  the  potter  embellishes  his 
vessels  with  the  conventionalised  forms  of 
trees  and  animals  as  wrought  on  temple 
pillars.  Common  speech  is  the  diction 
of  prayer,  and  as  the  first  prayers  or 
spells  were  made  by  poets,  the  speech 
of  daily  life  is  not  wanting  in  the  quality 
of  enchantment  or  at  least  of  courtesy. 
Could  art  be  more  one  with  life  than 
here  where  art  has  become  the  habitual 
manner  of  living  ?  The  symbolism  of  art 
permeates  life.  Life,  not  art,  is  the 
sacrament ;  and  art,  by  use,  becomes  as 
it  were  a  second  nature.  Here  art  is  not 
specialized,  but  life  is  organized.  The 
activities  of  religion  and  art  are  sub- 
ordinate to  that  supreme  activity  which 
is  living.  Decorative  art  is  true  in  this, 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

that  it  does  not  mar,  but  moulds  life.  If 
the  end  of  art  is  to  produce  beauty,  the 
fruit  of  art  is  to  be  seen  only  in  living,  for 
beauty  is  attained  not  by  understanding 
but  by  use  ;  the  conscious  formula- 
tion of  its  principles  does  not  produce 
beauty,  but  harmonious  living  illustrates 
its  idea.  If  there  is  an  idea  or  principle 
of  beauty,  our  senses  give  us  the  first 
intimation  of  its  existence,  and  decorative 
art  aims  at  the  wide  diffusion  of  sensuous 
beauty.  Plato  insists  in  the  Republic  on 
the  importance  of  a  beautiful  decorative 
art — the  only  art  he  would  permit  in  the 
ideal  state.  The  craftsmen  in  the  ideal 
state  must  be  skilled  in  the  making  of 
beautiful  objects,  so  that  the  young, 
becoming  familiar  by  the  senses  with 
the  beauty  of  material  things,  may  grow 
from  their  earliest  years  '  into  likeness 
and  friendship  and  harmony  with  the 
principle  of  beauty.'  Yes,  decorative 
art  is  our  first  education  in  beauty, 
and  it  is  a  compulsory  education. 

132 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

Art  is  made  a  part  of  living,  and  none 
may  plead  that  he  has  not  the  leisure 
for  it.  Its  end  is  to  make  a  pleasure  "of 
toil — to  make  a  delight  of  life.  It 
embellishes  those  things  which  are  made 
to  meet  the  ordinary  necessities  of  life, 
and  gives  pleasure  to  the  senses  which 
are  the  first  instruments  of  toil. 
Decorative  art  is  productive  of  beauty 
in  this  that  it  cultivates  in  all  alike 
an  instinctive  intolerance  of  ugliness.  It 
generates  the  beautiful  living,  which  in 
its  turn  generates  beautiful  art,  and  so 
beauty  is  perpetuated.  Love  and  art  are 
both  concerned  with  beauty,  not  with 
beauty  alone,  but  with  the  generation 
and  reproduction  of  beauty. 

'  From  fairest  creatures  we  demand  increase, 
That  thereby  beauty's  rose  may  never  die.' 

If  beauty  is  the  end  of  art,  your  art 
completely  misses  its  end.  The  artist's 
need  for  self-expression  is  the  basis  of 
your  art.  Expression  is  fatal  to  the 

133 


On  the  Truth  of  Decorative  Art 

spirit  of  selection,  so  essential  to  the 
perpetuation  of  beauty.  On  your  art- 
theory  you  cannot  logically  exclude  the 
ugly  from  the  province  of  art,  and  as 
most  of  your  artists  are  obsessed  with 
the  ugly  nowadays,  you  secure  a 
perpetuation  of  ugliness." 

"  Art  ceases  to  be  true  to  life  if  it 
ignores  the  facts  of  life.  If  our  art 
includes  the  ugly,  it  is  because  our  art 
takes  all  life  for  its  province.  Art  at 
least  should  be  free  from  prejudice." 

"  Beauty  is  a  prejudice.  Art  seeks  to 
vindicate  the  ways  of  man  to  man.  But 
this  vindication  is  possible  in  two  ways. 
One,  which  is  the  better,  is  to  fashion 
our  ways  after  our  prejudice.  This  is  the 
way  of  the  East.  The  other,  which  is  the 
worse,  is  to  fashion  our  prejudice  after 
our  ways, — that  is  to  uproot  our  prejudice, 
to  destroy  art.  This  is  the  way  of  the 
West."  " 

134 


1 1477 


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